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Andrew S. Wright's Great Bear Expedition: Day 5-7 Black Flowers Blossom
Missed the first three blog postings? Read the first here, the second here and the third here.
My transfer to the vessel Great Bear II is delayed by an invitation from Marvin Robinson to attend his daughter’s graduation ceremony at the local community hall in Hartley Bay. The hall has been transformed by the local community and it looks absolutely fabulous decked from wall to ceiling with purple and pink netting — it feels like I have walked on to a Hollywood movie set and the graduating teenagers are clearly enjoying their moment. The entire community arrives to celebrate the hamlet’s graduating high school students’ achievement — the hall is brimming with pride and rightly so. It was a delight to be included and I thoroughly enjoyed the evening’s festivities, which terminated with fireworks at midnight.
Aboard the vessel Great Bear II I learn that the weather is rapidly deteriorating to the north. Eric, the skipper, breaks the news and apologizes for the change in plans. We are now headed south for a few days to explore some inner coastal estuaries while avoiding the weather. I am ecstatic for the Great Bear II is bound for my favorite estuary on the coast. This will be my fourth visit to this estuary and every time I am simply awestruck by its beauty. The estuary’s ecosystem has a powerful effect upon me for here Darwin’s theory of evolution transforms from the stuff of dusty textbooks to a vibrant, interconnected ecosystem. Like many coastal estuaries, the delta of the egressing river is carved with narrow channels, punctuated by sandbars and levees built from years of river sediment. Thriving on these mudflats are waist-high rafts of (almost) fluorescent green grasses and sedges, while further back into the valley salmonberry bushes flourish. Look a little further back and great spruce, hemlock and cedar trees rise to flank the river and fill the valley. This is perfect grizzly bear habitat: sedges and grasses for spring, berries and roots for summer and floods of salmon for fall.
If the oil pipeline was to become a reality and the coast becomes plied by oil tankers this estuary is directly at risk. If an accident were to occur and oil were to be spilled anywhere along the proposed tanker route this estuary would be impacted in less than 24 hours, because the tidal currents would sweep the spill north and south with their flood and the ebb. So quickly and widely would the oil spread that containment and remediation efforts would be rendered impractical and impossible—this convoluted coastline has thousands of miles of waterfront contained in a very small area. The parallels to the wetland marshes of the Gulf of Mexico are clear. These grassland estuary meadows are flooded at every high tide; they are fertilized by the decomposing salmon bodies in fall and the nutrient-laden floods of spring. Encased in oil, these wetlands, critical food habitat for grizzly bears in spring, would be rendered fallow. Fallow meadows mean starving bears— an incomprehensible loss.
We have been exploring the estuary for the better part of a day now and just when we have given up hoping of finding a bear feeding on the lush sedges, a very skinny grizzly reveals her presence in the tall grass. Without too much concern she continues to eat. Every few minutes she gathers the grass by swiping a swath with her paw before biting the grass mid-blade to gain a full mouthful. Barely revealing her presence we watch from a respectful distance when suddenly two cubs, almost imperceptible, stand up to reveal themselves, their little black noses just visible poking between the blades of grass. The sow, totally at ease, wanders towards us seeking the river edge. She stoops to drink and the cubs dutifully mimic their mother. Something spooks the mother, for she stops to look into the estuary, totally turning her back on us. The cubs take the opportunity to check us out.
- Photo: Andrew S. Wright
Eric and Trish from the Great Bear recognize the mother by her distinctive fur pattern and realize that these are this year’s cubs. The mother, skinny, young and perhaps inexperienced, had lost both her cubs from the previous litter — presumably to aggressive boars. This year, she has found a very safe place to rear her young; the cubs are secluded in a remote section of the estuary, sequestered between two waterfalls. Covered by the noise of the cascades she can easily nurse and communicate with her young in relative safety. Yet something in the estuary has given her cause for concern. The following day we find massive grizzly tracks on a sandbar not 200 yards from her location. Later we get a momentary glimpse of a massive male bear in the estuary. I suspect that the mother (sow) bear was aware of the boar’s presence.
As we leave the grasslands we encounter a collection of dark chocolate lilies growing amongst the sedges. If black flowers are to blossom in this estuary, I would suggest that they should only be lilies like these — not deposits of oil.
P.S. After two days nestled in the safety of a coastal estuary, the weather has begun to ease and we are headed north as planned, hopefully via whale channels and another chance to encounter the humpbacks and maybe the elusive orca clans. We have a chance as the water is thick with herring — the preferred feed of the humpbacks.
Check out where Andrew is currently on Google maps!
