Back home! And with a better wifi connection here, I can finally upload a compilation video of the field work in the Fraser river estuary. In the clip below you can see us catching, measuring and fin clipping salmon (and other fish), both in the muddy canals of the estuary and in more open waters where we were at the end of the week.
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I've been out fishing for 4 days now, and tomorrow will be the last day. As I said it will probably have to wait until I get home to get a full video uploaded about my experiences with this fishing for science. However, I did manage to get this short edit uploaded with some footage from today, when we were fishing from the bigger boat. The first couple of days we were on smaller boats, fishing more inside the little canals of the estuary. That was mostly very muddy, you'll see that later. I left Victoria on May 13th in an old skool VW campervan, which I rented at Base Camp Adventure Rentals in Victoria. After a quick tour of the ’85 Westfalia Vanagon I was on my way to the ferry, heading for Vancouver on the mainland! Right now I’m staying at Peace Arch RV Park in Surrey, one of Vancouver’s many suburbs. Wi-Fi isn’t great at the campsite, so it will be a while to get the next video uploaded. Probably that will have to wait until I get back home. I’ll put some images up for now instead.
Yesterday morning, at 7:00 am sharp, I met Dave Scott & Misty MacDuffee at Ladner Harbour. They work for the Raincoast Conservation Foundation. During the summer months, they go out onto the Fraser River estuary every other week. There’s always a couple of volunteers there. They’re mostly students, but this week I am a volunteer too! We quickly left the harbour in two small speedboats filled with fishing gear, off to find salmon. The idea is to find out where the young chinook species of salmon came from, as we catch them at different sites throughout the estuary (copying the locations from a study in the ’70s) and take fin clips for DNA analysis to figure out which salmon population they originated from. Catching the fish is done in two different ways: by setting a fyke net and by hand dragging a beach net. Fish are then sorted by species and counted. Chinook salmon are measured for size, and from a number of them a fin clip is taken for analysis. Then they are set free again. On a normal day we set the fyke net at one location at high tide, do the beach net fishing at two other sites (three runs per site) and come back to the fyke net at low tide to check what’s in there. It’s a little hard sometimes because of the muddy riverbanks and marshes of the estuary. You sink into the mud quite deep most of the time! I’m having a great time helping out with this research. It’s really cool to do this kind of work in a place like this. Early in the morning, when we leave the harbour in the boats and all is still quiet, it’s absolutely beautiful out here. You can see the Vancouver downtown area on the horizon, and behind it the mountains. Looking over to the other side you see the Strait of Georgia – the waterway between Vancouver Island and the mainland coast, with the Gulf Islands and the mountains of Vancouver Island on the horizon. Bald eagles soar overhead in the sky above as a seal swims by, curious about what we’re doing there. Over the marshes it’s a feast for barn swallows and violet-green swallows, and we also see red-winged blackbirds shooting by. Today in the early morning hours we even saw a huge flock of snow geese. Well, you’ve probably guessed it – I consider this trip a success! On the last conference day I spent the afternoon at the Royal BC Museum. The exhibition on the natural history of British Columbia had some very nice parts, like a blown up model of life in the soil. I also liked the life-sized dioramas of wildlife in their natural habitat. But overall I found the natural history exhibit could use some modernization. There were lots of workstations where visitors could engage with a computer for more info. However, this is not my idea of effective interactivity. Another part of the museum is an exhibition on First Nations culture and the development of British Columbia after the arrival of European settlers at the end of the 18th century. This was a very immersive exhibition where they had rebuilt whole streets with storefronts like there were in the 19th century. There was even a replica of the stern of the HMS Discovery, the ship used by George Vancouver during his exploration of the west coast of North America. It was definitely a very different world back then. After discovery of British Columbia the new settlers immediately started to develop multiple forms of exploitation of its natural resources: hunting, fur-trapping, fishing, logging, mining – it must have felt like they hit the jackpot. The CSEE conference was concluded with a banquet on Wednesday evening (May 10th). Walking into the big room full of tables I chose a seat with some friendly looking guys and girls. I had a lovely evening and went with them for some drinks at the ‘official’ after party location downtown. While the conference ended on Wednesday evening, there were a number of optional excursions planned on Thursday. These were all fully booked right away, and I had not managed to acquire a ticket. However, someone tipped me that there usually were no-shows on these activities, and that I could always try to claim one of those spots. So I showed up early in the morning and sure enough I could join on a fantastic trip to Botanical Beach on the southern coast of Vancouver Island, where we visited tidal pools with the most amazing sea life (anemone, sea urchins and all kinds of other cool creatures). After that we drove to Avatar Grove near Port Renfrew, an area of old growth coastal rainforest, discovered a couple of years back by TJ Watt from the Ancient Forest Alliance, just as it was slated for logging. TJ was there himself to guide us through the area, which the AFA managed to get protected from logging, and where they are working hard to open it up to the public by building stairs and boardwalks to create a nice hiking loop along the ancient and huge trees. We saw multiple giants of western red cedars, hundreds of years old, with circumferences that could reach over 10 meters! What a lucky break for me that I managed to get in on this excursion after all! As it turns out yesterday was just unfortunate. Today was a wholly different experience! I saw some great and very much understandable talks, got to ask a couple of questions even, and met some cool people at the poster presentations. I guess I just had to give it a while and not jump to hasty conclusions. O, and note to self: don’t attend in-depth presentations on ecological modelling, where sheet after sheet of equations is presented with little to no time to explain them… In the morning I attended a series of talks on Scientific Advocacy vs Scientific Advice. Given that societies are getting more and more polarized, and experts are not always trusted anymore, it seemed scientists had a fair question to ask themselves: how objective am I really? This turned out to be a very interesting morning. We learned it’s extremely hard to be fully objective, that advocacy is science with the intent to influence, and advice is science with the intent to inform. It’s alright to advocate, but then be honest about it, and be sure to come fully prepared unless you want to run the risk of getting embarrassed because you didn’t know the whole story. The other talks I picked out were on many different things, often related to climate change: alpine butterflies, Atlantic cod, tundra plants, coral bleaching, ocean acidification, effects of roads through peat lands, spatial and temporal distribution of bobcats and lynx in British Columbia etc. etc. At the poster presentations I met Katie Davidson, a graduate student with Chris Darimont, he's the one who suggested I attend CSEE and helped me get in contact with Misty MacDuffee and Dave Scott who I’m meeting next week. Apparently Chris was present at CSEE as well, but I missed him. Too bad – I would have loved to shake his hand and thank him for his help. Katie studied mice diets on Goose Island (a remote island in the Hakai protected area of the Great Bear Rainforest). What a dream job! Or was it – spending months away from home in a remote location covered in mice poo and pee isn’t always all that glamorous, she said. With a big smile on her face I must add! Afterwards I talked with Deborah Jenkins, who is some kind of ecologist superstar: she studies caribou and muskox in the Arctic. Until a short while ago she used to live in a remote settlement within her research area as well, and she says she really misses the wilderness. Deborah is the first scientist to systematically map population densities of these animals spread out over the Arctic. She did this by covering thousands and thousands of square miles by chopper. Right now she’s worried about the effects of climate change on the dispersal of ‘her’ animals, as they seem to use the arctic sea ice to move around. Loss of ice will, among other problems, result in more isolated populations and poorer gene pools. I was really lucky bumping into Deborah – her poster was tucked away in the farthest corner of the room. It was an absolute delight to get to know her, and I hope to contact her again some time. The first full day of science talks at CSEE gave me the following insight: the talks are excellent, but on such an academic level that there is no clear connection to our school’s programme. My school trains kids at vocational level, which is worlds apart from the work that is presented and discussed at this conference. I’ll be honest: some parts fly right over my head as well, especially when statistical analysis is involved. Nothing is done to make the talks more understandable to the general public, as this really is a sharing of knowledge among peers. The atmosphere is great by the way: friendly and buzzing with science. I love it, it’s very interesting, but it’s also very clear to me that in my job I’m playing in a wholly different league.
This experience today has me a little taken aback to be honest. I was hoping to make some professional connections with the researchers here, but seeing how their work is on such a different level, I can’t even begin to find an opening for that. We’ll have to see what tomorrow and the day after will bring. Today I registered for the CSEE conference and attended the welcome speech. In recognition of the fact that the conference is being held on traditional territory of the WS'ANEC' (Saanich) & Lkwungen (Songhees) peoples, one of the opening speakers was a First Nations Elder woman, who blessed us in her native language, and with a moving traditional song. It was a very special moment which I did not capture on video since I did not want to ruin the moment by grabbing my cameraphone. There was a longer talk by this year’s President’s Award winner, Dr. Sally Otto. She is an evolution biologist combining mathematical models with evolutionary lab experiments. My scientific background was definitely tested trying to comprehend her research, and I will graciously admit I didn’t fully understand every part. It was about the chance of ‘evolutionary rescue’ i.e.: how can species effectively evolve to survive an ever quicker changing environment. If there was one thing I picked up, it’s that I’m definitely in an academic environment here. I do feel at home between scientists, but I also feel I may have been away for too long. It will certainly be a challenge to follow along with whatever science I will encounter in the next 3 days. Tomorrow the program starts at 8:00 am, so after this central opening I quickly went home to get some sleep. There’s still the jet lag to shake and I want to be rested and fully engaged in the morning! Excited! The short clip here is mostly footage I shot while hiking through Victoria yesterday, and a bit of footage from the CSEE opening. I always get a little anxious in the days before a big trip. This time it was even tougher since I’m travelling all by myself. But right now I’m typing this post from a desk at my B&B in Victoria, British Columbia which means everything went perfectly fine. It was a long day – I’m awake for almost 24 hours now, so it’s time to get some sleep. I wanted to share this video, though, in which I explain what I’m planning to do in Victoria this week. The video is in Dutch for now. In a final version I will add English subtitles. |
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In May 2017, I will spend some time in Victoria & Vancouver, British Columbia, as part of a 'Teacher's Internship'. You can follow my adventures in this blog. Archives
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