CANADA'S GREAT BEARS

Look at how this protective mamma bear holds her cub in her arms to give him a bit of a wash. 

Her gentle maternal care is truly touching. This mamma has spent late Autumn to Spring in a cave, having birthed them while still hibernation and staying in the den to feed them on her milk.

Black bear cubs stay with their mamma for the first one to three years of their lives while she protects them and teaches them how to thrive in the wild using their keen sense of smell, hearing, vision and strength. Once they are old enough, they will head off into the forest to live solo until they are ready to mate and start a family of their own. 

Mating is a summer affair with bears socializing shoulder to shoulder with potential mates. Once they have mated, black bears head off on their own again to forage and put on weight for their winter hibernation. If the black bear lives in the northern extent of their range, hibernation lasts longer — they will stay in their dens for seven to eight months longer than their southern counterparts. For those that enjoy the warmer climes in the south, hibernation is shorter. If food is available year-round, the bears do not hibernate at all.

The American black bear, Ursus americanus, is native to North America and found in Canada and the United States. 

They are the most common and widely distributed of the three bear species found in Canada. 

There are roughly 650,000 roaming our forests, swamps and streams — meaning there is a good chance of running into them if you spend any amount of time in the wild. 

Full-grown, these fuzzy monkeys will be able to run 48 kilometres (30 miles)  an hour and smell food up to 32 kilometres (20 miles) away.

With their excellent hearing, black bears usually know you are near well before you realize the same and generally take care to avoid you. Those that come in contact with humans often tend to want to check our garbage and hiking supplies for tasty snacks — hey, a free meal is a free meal.    

In British Columbia, we share our province with nearly half of all black bears and grizzly bears that reside in Canada. The 120,000 - 150,000 black bears who live in the province keep our Conservation Officers busy. They account for 14,000 - 25,000 of the calls the service receives each year. Most of those calls centre around their curiosity for the tasty smells emanating from our garbage. They are omnivores with vegetation making up 80-85% of their diet, but they are flexible around that — berries and seeds, salmon or Doritos — bears eat it all. 

And, as with all wild animals, diet is regional. In Labrador, the local black bear population lives mostly on caribou, rodents and voles. In the Pacific Northwest, salmon and other fish form a large part of the protein in their diet versus the bees, yellow jackets and honey others prefer. The braver of their number have been known to hunt elk, deer and moose calves — and a few showy bears have taken on adults of these large mammals. 

Bears hold a special place within our culture and in First Nation mythology in particular — celebrated in art, dance and song. In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakiutl First Nations of the Pacific Northwest, the word for black bear is t̕ła'yi — mother is a̱bas and łaxwa̱lap̓a means to love each other. 

Kermode or Spirit Bear, Ursus americanus kermodei

From the photos here you can see that black bears are not always black —  ranging in colour from cinnamon to brown, tan, blonde, red — and even white. 

The Kermode or Spirit Bear, Ursus americanus kermodei, a subspecies of black bear found only in British Columbia — and our official provincial mammal — is a distinctive creamy white. 

They are not albinos, their colouring stems from a recessive mutant gene — meaning that if they receive two copies it triggers a single, nonsynonymous nucleotide substitution that halts all melanin production. Well, not all. They have pigmented eyes and skin but no colour in their fur. The white colour is an advantage when you are hunting salmon by day. Salmon will shy away from their black cousins knowing their intention is to enjoy them as a tasty snack. 

Spirit Bears live in the Great Bear Rainforest on British Columbia's north and central coast alongside the Kitasoo/Xai’xais First Nation who call the Kermode moskgm’ol or white bear.

The Kitasoo/Xai’xais have a legend that tells of Goo-wee, Raven making one in every ten black bears white to remind us of the time glaciers blanketed the land then slowly retreated — their thaw giving rise to the bounty we harvest today.  

Black bears of any colour are a wee bit smaller than their brown bear or grizzly bear cousins, with males weighing in at 45 to 400 kilograms (100 to 900 pounds) and females ranging from 38 to 225 kilograms (85 to 500 pounds). 

Small by relative standards but still very large animals. And they are long-lived or at least can be. Bears in captivity can live up to 30 years but those who dwell in our forests tend to live half as long or less from a mixture of local hazards and humans. 

Reference: Wild Safe BC: https://wildsafebc.com/species/black-bear/

CRAB: HEART OF A WARRIOR

Look how epic this little guy is! 

He is a crab — and if you asked him, the fiercest warrior that ever lived. While that may not be strictly true, crabs do have the heart of a warrior and will raise their claws, sometimes only millimetres into the air, to assert dominance over their world. 

Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the Phylum Arthropoda. 

In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw of the Pacific Northwest, this brave fellow is ḵ̓u'mis — both a tasty snack and familiar to the supernatural deity Tuxw'id, a female warrior spirit. Given their natural armour and clear bravery, it is a fitting role.

They inhabit all the world's oceans, sandy beaches, many of our freshwater lakes and streams. Some few prefer to live in forests.

Crabs build their shells from highly mineralized chitin — and chitin gets around. It is the main structural component of the exoskeletons of many of our crustacean and insect friends. Shrimp, crab, and lobster all use it to build their exoskeletons.

Chitin is a polysaccharide — a large molecule made of many smaller monosaccharides or simple sugars, like glucose. 

It is handy stuff, forming crystalline nanofibrils or whiskers. Chitin is actually the second most abundant polysaccharide after cellulose. It is interesting as we usually think of these molecules in the context of their sugary context but they build many other very useful things in nature — not the least of these are the hard shells or exoskeletons of our crustacean friends.

Crabs in the Fossil Record

The earliest unambiguous crab fossils date from the Early Jurassic, with the oldest being Eocarcinus from the early Pliensbachian of Britain, which likely represents a stem-group lineage, as it lacks several key morphological features that define modern crabs. 

Most Jurassic crabs are only known from dorsal — or top half of the body — carapaces, making it difficult to determine their relationships. Crabs radiated in the Late Jurassic, corresponding with an increase in reef habitats, though they would decline at the end of the Jurassic as the result of the decline of reef ecosystems. Crabs increased in diversity through the Cretaceous and represented the dominant group of decapods by the end.

We find wonderful fossil crab specimens on Vancouver Island. The first I ever collected was at Shelter Point, then again on Hornby Island, down on the Olympic Peninsula and along Vancouver Island's west coast near Nootka Sound. They are, of course, found globally and are one of the most pleasing fossils to find and aggravating to prep of all the specimens you will ever have in your collection. Bless them.

HUNTING NEUTRINOS AND DARK MATTER

Deep inside the largest and deepest gold mine in North America scientists are looking for dark matter particles and neutrinos instead of precious metals. It may not seem exciting on the surface — but it was far below!

The Homestake Gold Mine in Lawrence County, South Dakota was a going concern from about 1876 to 2001.

The mine produced more than forty million troy ounces of gold in its one hundred and twenty-five-year history, dating back to the beginnings of the Black Hills Gold Rush.

To give its humble beginnings a bit of context, Homestake was started in the days of miners hauling loads of ore via horse and mule and the battles of the Great Sioux War. Folk moved about via horse-drawn buggies and Alexander Graham Bell had just made his first successful telephone call.

Wyatt Earp was working in Dodge City, Kansas — he had yet to get the heck outta Dodge — and Mark Twain was in the throes of publishing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  — And our dear Thomas Edison had just opened his first industrial research lab in Menlo Park. The mine is part of the Homestake Formation, an Early Proterozoic layer of iron carbonate and iron silicate that produces auriferous greenschist gold. What does all that geeky goodness mean? If you were a gold miner it would be music to your ears. They ground down that schist to get the glorious good stuff and made a tiny wee sum doing so. But then gold prices levelled off — from 1997 ($287.05) to 2001 ($276.50) — and rumblings from the owners started to grow. They bailed in 2001, ironically just before gold prices started up again.

But back to 2001, that levelling saw the owners look to a new source of revenue in an unusual place. One they had explored way back in the 1960s in a purpose-built underground laboratory that sounds more like something out of a science fiction book. The brainchild of chemist and astrophysicists, John Bahcall and Raymond Davis Jr. from the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, the laboratory was used to observe solar neutrinos, electron neutrinos produced by the Sun as a product of nuclear fusion

BACK IN THE USSR: BEADANTICERAS OF THE NORTHERN CAUCASUS

This lovely oil in water coloured ammonite is the beauty Beudanticeras sp. from the Lower Cretaceous (Upper Aptian), Krasnodar region, Northern Caucasus, southern Russia. 

This area of the world has beautiful fossil specimens with their distinct colouring. The geology and paleontological history of the region are fascinating as is its more recent history. 

The territory of present Krasnodar Krai was inhabited as early as the Paleolithic, about 2 million years ago. It was inhabited by various tribes and peoples since ancient times. There were several Greek colonies on the Black Sea coast, which later became part of the Kingdom of the Bosporus. In 631, the Great Bulgaria state was founded in the Kuban. In the 8th-10th centuries, the territory was part of Khazaria.

In 965, the Kievan Prince Svyatoslav defeated the Khazar Khanate and this region came under the power of Kievan Rus, Tmutarakan principality was formed. At the end of the 11th century, in connection with the strengthening of the Polovtsy and claims of Byzantium, Tmutarakan principality came under the authority of the Byzantine emperors (until 1204).

In 1243-1438, this land was part of the Golden Horde. After its collapse, Kuban was divided between the Crimean Khanate, Circassia, and the Ottoman Empire, which dominated in the region. Russia began to challenge the protectorate over the territory during the Russian-Turkish wars.

In 1783, by decree of Catherine II, the right-bank Kuban and Taman Peninsula became part of the Russian Empire after the liquidation of the Crimean Khanate. In 1792-1793, Zaporozhye (Black Sea) Cossacks resettled here to protect new borders of the country along the Kuban River. 

During the military campaign to establish control over the North Caucasus (Caucasian War of 1763-1864), in the 1830s, the Ottoman Empire for forced out of the region and Russia gained access to the Black Sea coast.

Prior to the revolutionary events of 1917, most of the territory of present Krasnodar Krai was occupied by the Kuban region, founded in 1860. In 1900, the population of the region was about 2 million people. In 1913, it ranked 2nd by the gross harvest of grain, 1st place for the production of bread in the Russian Empire.

The Kuban was one of the centres of resistance after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. In 1918-1920, there was a non-Bolshevik Kuban People’s Republic. In 1924, North-Caucasian krai was founded with the centre in Rostov-on-Don. In 1934, it was divided into Azov-Black Sea krai (Rostov-on-Don) and North Caucasus krai (Stavropol).

September 13, 1937, the Azov-Black Sea region was divided into the Rostov region and Krasnodar Krai that included Adygei autonomous oblast. During the Second World War, the region was captured by the Germans. After the battle for the Caucasus, it was liberated. There are about 1,500 monuments and memorials commemorating heroes of the war on the territory of Krasnodar Krai.

The lovely block you see here is in the collections of the awesome John Fam, Vice-Chair of the Vancouver Paleontological Society in British Columbia, Canada.

TURTLE SHELLS: HOME SWEET ARMOUR

Turtle shells are different from the body armour or armoured shells we see adorning dinosaurs like the ankylosaurs. 

Ankylosaurs were blessed with huge plates of bone embedded into their skin that acted as a natural shield against predators. Crocodilians have these same bony plates, or osteoderms, embedded in their skin to give them extra protection. 

We find similar body armour on armadillos. Yet, armadillos, crocodiles and ankylosaurs each evolved body armour that differs significantly from that found in turtles. 

Remarkably, the carapace we see in fully grown turtles is formed from different parts of their skeletons. And, once fully formed, turtle shell fully integrates with the backbone and ribs, growing over the animal in a domed carapace — both protection and home sweet home. 

When we look to the oldest known members of the turtle lineage, Proterochersis and Proganochelys, found as fossils in 210 million-year-old outcrops in present-day Germany and Poland. Like the turtles we find today, these stem-turtles already had fully formed shells — special bony or cartilaginous shell that originates in their ribs. It is a useful adaptation to help deter predators as their soft interior makes for a tasty snack. 

Though I have never eaten turtle (and never will), it was a common and sought after meat for turtle soup. Years ago, I read of Charles Darwin craving it after trying it for the first time on his trip in 1831 aboard the HMS Beagle. It seems Charlie like to taste every exotic new species he had the opportunity to try.

Turtle armour is made of dermal bone and endochondral bones from their vertebrae and rib cage. It is fundamentally different from the armour seen on our other vertebrate friends and the design creates some unique features in turtles. 

Because turtle ribs fuse together with some of their vertebrae, they have to pump air in and out of the lungs with their leg muscles. 

Another unusual feature in turtles is their limb girdles, pectoral and pelvic, which have come to lie within their rib cage, a feature that allows some turtles to pull their limbs inside the shell for protection. 

Sea turtles didn't develop this behaviour or ability and do not retract into their shells like other turtles.

Armadillos have armour formed by plates of dermal bone covered in relatively small, overlapping epidermal scales called scutes, composed of bone with a covering of horn. In crocodiles, their exoskeletons form their armour, similar to ankylosaurs. A bit of genius design, really. It is made of protective dermal and epidermal components that begin as rete Malpighii: a single layer of short, cylindrical cells that lose their nuclei over time as they transform into a horny layer.

Depending on the species and age of the turtle, turtles eat all kinds of food including seagrass, seaweed, crabs, jellyfish, and shrimp,. That tasty diet shows up in the composition of their armour as they have oodles of great nutrients to work with. The lovely example you see here is from the Oxford Museum collections.

PHYLLOCERAS VELLEDAE OF MADAGASCAR

This specimen of Phylloceras velledae (Michelin) has a shell with a small umbilicus, arched, acute venter, and at some growth stage, falcoid ribs that spring in pairs from umbilical tubercles, disappearing on the outer whorls.

This specimen has been polished to show the sutures to great effect. These ammonites are common in rock shops and plentiful on the internet.

These ammonites make a lovely addition to any teaching collection as they provide a lot of detail and can be handled quite well by small, less gentle hands. 

Like other cephalopods, ammonites had sharp, beak-like jaws inside a ring of squid-like tentacles that extended from their shells. 

They used these tentacles to snare prey, — plankton, vegetation, fish and crustaceans — similar to the way a squid or octopus hunt today.

Catching a fish with your hands is no easy feat, as I'm sure you know. But the Ammonites were skilled and successful hunters. They caught their prey while swimming and floating in the water column. 

Within their shells, they had a number of chambers, called septa, filled with gas or fluid that were interconnected by a wee air tube. By pushing air in or out, they were able to control their buoyancy in the water column.

They lived in the last chamber of their shells, continuously building new shell material as they grew. As each new chamber was added, the squid-like body of the ammonite would move down to occupy the final outside chamber.

They were a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids — octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish) than they are to shelled nautiloids such as the living Nautilus species.

DEEP TIME IN THE LANDS OF THE NUU-CHAH-NULTH

Nootka Fossil Field Trip. Photo: John Fam

The rugged west coast of Vancouver Island offers spectacular views of a wild British Columbia. Here the seas heave along the shores slowly eroding the magnificent deposits that often contain fossils. 

Just off the shores of Vancouver Island, east of Gold River and south of Tahsis is the picturesque and remote Nootka Island.

This is the land of the proud and thriving Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations who have lived here always. 

Always is a long time, but we know from oral history and archaeological evidence that the Mowachaht and Muchalaht peoples lived here, along with many others, for many thousands of years — a time span much like always. 

While we know this area as Nootka Sound and the land we explore for fossils as Nootka Island, these names stem from a wee misunderstanding. 

Just four years after the 1774 visit by Spanish explorer Juan Pérez — and only a year before the Spanish established a military and fur trading post on the site of Yuquot — the Nuu-chah-nulth met the Englishman, James Cook.  

Captain Cook sailed to the village of Yuquot just west of Vancouver Island to a very warm welcome. He and his crew stayed on for a month of storytelling, trading and ship repairs. Friendly, but not familiar with the local language, he misunderstood the name for both the people and land to be Nootka. In actual fact, Nootka means, go around, go around. 

Two hundred years later, in 1978, the Nuu-chah-nulth chose the collective term Nuu-chah-nulth — nuučaan̓uł, meaning all along the mountains and sea or along the outside (of Vancouver Island) — to describe themselves. 

It is a term now used to describe several First Nations people living along western Vancouver Island, British Columbia. 

It is similar in a way to the use of the United Kingdom to refer to the lands of England, Scotland and Wales — though using United Kingdom-ers would be odd. Bless the Nuu-chah-nulth for their grace in choosing this collective name.  

An older term for this group of peoples was Aht, which means people in their language and is a component in all the names of their subgroups, and of some locations — Yuquot, Mowachaht, Kyuquot, Opitsaht. While collectively, they are the Nuu-chah-nulth, be interested in their more regional name should you meet them. 

But why does it matter? If you have ever mistakenly referred to someone from New Zealand as an Aussie or someone from Scotland as English, you have likely been schooled by an immediate — sometimes forceful, sometimes gracious — correction of your ways. The best answer to why it matters is because it matters.

Each of the subgroups of the Nuu-chah-nulth viewed their lands and seasonal migration within them (though not outside of them) from a viewpoint of inside and outside. Kla'a or outside is the term for their coastal environment and hilstis for their inside or inland environment.

It is to their kla'a that I was most keen to explore. Here, the lovely Late Eocene and Early Miocene exposures offer up fossil crab, mostly the species Raninid, along with fossil gastropods, bivalves, pine cones and spectacularly — a singular seed pod. These wonderfully preserved specimens are found in concretion along the foreshore where time and tide erode them out each year.

Five years after Spanish explorer Juan Pérez's first visit, the Spanish built and maintained a military post at Yuquot where they tore down the local houses to build their own structures and set up what would become a significant fur trade port for the Northwest Coast — with the local Chief Maquinna's blessing and his warriors acting as middlemen to other First Nations. 

Following reports of Cook's exploration British traders began to use the harbour of Nootka (Friendly Cove) as a base for a promising trade with China in sea-otter pelts but became embroiled with the Spanish who claimed (albeit erroneously) sovereignty over the Pacific Ocean. 

Dan Bowen searching an outcrop. Photo: John Fam

The ensuing Nootka Incident of 1790 nearly led to war between Britain and Spain (over lands neither could actually claim) but talk of war settled and the dispute was settled diplomatically. 

George Vancouver on his subsequent exploration in 1792 circumnavigated the island and charted much of the coastline. His meeting with the Spanish captain Bodega y Quadra at Nootka was friendly but did not accomplish the expected formal ceding of land by the Spanish to the British. 

It resulted however in his vain naming the island "Vancouver and Quadra." The Spanish captain's name was later dropped and given to the island on the east side of Discovery Strait. Again, another vain and unearned title that persists to this day.

Early settlement of the island was carried out mainly under the sponsorship of the Hudson's Bay Company whose lease from the Crown amounted to 7 shillings per year — that's roughly equal to £100.00 or $174 CDN today. Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, was founded in 1843 as Fort Victoria on the southern end of Vancouver Island by the Hudson's Bay Company's Chief Factor, Sir James Douglas. 

With Douglas's help, the Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Rupert on the north end of Vancouver Island in 1849. Both became centres of fur trade and trade between First Nations and solidified the Hudson's Bay Company's trading monopoly in the Pacific Northwest.

The settlement of Fort Victoria on the southern tip of Vancouver Island — handily south of the 49th parallel — greatly aided British negotiators to retain all of the islands when a line was finally set to mark the northern boundary of the United States with the signing of the Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1846. Vancouver Island became a separate British colony in 1858. British Columbia, exclusive of the island, was made a colony in 1858 and in 1866 the two colonies were joined into one — becoming a province of Canada in 1871 with Victoria as the capital.

Dan Bowen, Chair of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society (VIPS) did a truly splendid talk on the Fossils of Nootka Sound. With his permission, I have uploaded the talk to the ARCHEA YouTube Channel for all to enjoy. Do take a boo, he is a great presenter. Dan also graciously provided the photos you see here. The last of the photos you see here is from the August 2021 Nootka Fossil Field Trip. Photo: John Fam, Vice-Chair, Vancouver Paleontological Society (VanPS).

Know Before You Go — Nootka Trail

The Nootka Trail passes through the traditional lands of the Mowachaht/Muchalat First Nations who have lived here since always. They share this area with humpback and Gray whales, orcas, seals, sea lions, black bears, wolves, cougars, eagles, ravens, sea birds, river otters, insects and the many colourful intertidal creatures that you'll want to photograph.

This is a remote West Coast wilderness experience. Getting to Nootka Island requires some planning as you'll need to take a seaplane or water taxi to reach the trailhead. The trail takes 4-8 days to cover the 37 km year-round hike. The peak season is July to September. Permits are not required for the hike. 

Access via: Air Nootka floatplane, water taxi, or MV Uchuck III

• Dan Bowen, VIPS on the Fossils of Nootka: https://youtu.be/rsewBFztxSY
• https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sir-james-douglas
• file:///C:/Users/tosca/Downloads/186162-Article%20Text-199217-1-10-20151106.pdf
• Nootka Trip Planning: https://mbguiding.ca/nootka-trail-nootka-island/#overview

MIGHTY EAGLE: KWIKW (KW-EE-KW)

Bald Eagle / Kwikw / Haliaeetus leucocephalus

A mighty Bald Eagle sitting with wings spread looks to be controlling the weather with his will as much as being subject to it. 

This fellow has just taken a dip for his evening meal and is drying his feathers in the wind. 

As you can imagine, waterlogged feathers make flight difficult. Their wings are built for graceful soaring and gliding on updrafts of warm air called thermals. 

Their long feathers are slotted, easily separating so air flows smoothly and giving them the added benefit of soaring at slower speeds. 

As well as his wings, this fellow is also drying off his white head feathers. A bald eagle's white head can make it look bald from a distance but that is not where the name comes from. It is from the old English word balde, meaning white.

In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakiutl First Nations of the Pacific Northwest — or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala — an eagle is known as kwikw (kw-ee-kw) and an eagle's nest is called a kwigwat̕si. 

Should you encounter an eagle and wish to greet them in Kwak'wala, you would just say yo. Yup, just yo. They would like your yo hello better if you offered them some fresh fish. They dine on all sorts of small mammals, fish and birds but are especially fond of pink salmon or ha̱nu'n (han-oon).

These living dinosaurs are a true homage to their lineage. They soar our skies with effortless grace. Agile, violent and beautiful, these highly specialized predators can catch falling prey mid-flight and dive-bomb into rivers to snag delicious salmon. 

Their beauty and agility are millions of years in the making. From their skeletal structure to their blood cells, today’s birds share a surprising evolutionary foundation with reptiles. 

Between 144 million and 66 million years ago, during the Mesozoic era, we see the first birds evolve. Eventually, tens of millions of years ago, an ancient group of birds called kites developed. Like today’s bald eagle, early kites are thought to have scavenged and hunted fish.

About 36 million years ago, the first eagles descended from kites, their smaller cousins. First to appear were the early sea eagles, which — like kites — continued to prey on fish and whose feet were free of feathers, along with booted eagles, which had feathers below the knee. Fossils of Bald Eagles are very rare and date to the late Pleistocene. Eagles are known from the early Pleistocene of Florida, but they are extinct species not closely related to the bald eagle.

Like the kites, bald eagles have featherless feet, but they also developed a range of other impressive adaptations that help them hunt fish and fowl in a watery environment. Each foot has four powerful toes with sharp talons. Tiny projections on the bottom of their feet called “spicules” help bald eagles grasp their prey. A bald eagle also has serrations on the roof of its mouth that help it hold slippery fish, and incredibly, the black pigment in its wing feathers strengthens them against breakage when they dive head first into water.

Obviously, there is much more than their striking white heads that sets these iconic raptors apart from the crowd. Their incredible physiology, built for life near the water, is literally millions of years in the making. 

NOOTKA: FOSSILS AND FIRST NATION HISTORY

Nootka Fossil Field Trip. Photo: John Fam

The rugged west coast of Vancouver Island offers spectacular views of a wild British Columbia. Here the seas heave along the shores slowly eroding the magnificent deposits that often contain fossils. 

Just off the shores of Vancouver Island, east of Gold River and south of Tahsis is the picturesque and remote Nootka Island.

This is the land of the proud and thriving Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations who have lived here always. 

Always is a long time, but we know from oral history and archaeological evidence that the Mowachaht and Muchalaht peoples lived here, along with many others, for many thousands of years — a time span much like always. 

While we know this area as Nootka Sound and the land we explore for fossils as Nootka Island, these names stem from a wee misunderstanding. 

Just four years after the 1774 visit by Spanish explorer Juan Pérez — and only a year before the Spanish established a military and fur trading post on the site of Yuquot — the Nuu-chah-nulth met the Englishman, James Cook.  

Captain Cook sailed to the village of Yuquot just west of Vancouver Island to a very warm welcome. He and his crew stayed on for a month of storytelling, trading and ship repairs. Friendly, but not familiar with the local language, he misunderstood the name for both the people and land to be Nootka. In actual fact, Nootka means, go around, go around. 

Two hundred years later, in 1978, the Nuu-chah-nulth chose the collective term Nuu-chah-nulth — nuučaan̓uł, meaning all along the mountains and sea or along the outside (of Vancouver Island) — to describe themselves. 

It is a term now used to describe several First Nations people living along western Vancouver Island, British Columbia. 

It is similar in a way to the use of the United Kingdom to refer to the lands of England, Scotland and Wales — though using United Kingdom-ers would be odd. Bless the Nuu-chah-nulth for their grace in choosing this collective name.  

An older term for this group of peoples was Aht, which means people in their language and is a component in all the names of their subgroups, and of some locations — Yuquot, Mowachaht, Kyuquot, Opitsaht. While collectively, they are the Nuu-chah-nulth, be interested in their more regional name should you meet them. 

But why does it matter? If you have ever mistakenly referred to someone from New Zealand as an Aussie or someone from Scotland as English, you have likely been schooled by an immediate — sometimes forceful, sometimes gracious — correction of your ways. The best answer to why it matters is because it matters.

Each of the subgroups of the Nuu-chah-nulth viewed their lands and seasonal migration within them (though not outside of them) from a viewpoint of inside and outside. Kla'a or outside is the term for their coastal environment and hilstis for their inside or inland environment.

It is to their kla'a that I was most keen to explore. Here, the lovely Late Eocene and Early Miocene exposures offer up fossil crab, mostly the species Raninid, along with fossil gastropods, bivalves, pine cones and spectacularly — a singular seed pod. These wonderfully preserved specimens are found in concretion along the foreshore where time and tide erode them out each year.

Five years after Spanish explorer Juan Pérez's first visit, the Spanish built and maintained a military post at Yuquot where they tore down the local houses to build their own structures and set up what would become a significant fur trade port for the Northwest Coast — with the local Chief Maquinna's blessing and his warriors acting as middlemen to other First Nations. 

Following reports of Cook's exploration British traders began to use the harbour of Nootka (Friendly Cove) as a base for a promising trade with China in sea-otter pelts but became embroiled with the Spanish who claimed (albeit erroneously) sovereignty over the Pacific Ocean. 

Dan Bowen searching an outcrop. Photo: John Fam

The ensuing Nootka Incident of 1790 nearly led to war between Britain and Spain (over lands neither could actually claim) but talk of war settled and the dispute was settled diplomatically. 

George Vancouver on his subsequent exploration in 1792 circumnavigated the island and charted much of the coastline. His meeting with the Spanish captain Bodega y Quadra at Nootka was friendly but did not accomplish the expected formal ceding of land by the Spanish to the British. 

It resulted however in his vain naming the island "Vancouver and Quadra." The Spanish captain's name was later dropped and given to the island on the east side of Discovery Strait. Again, another vain and unearned title that persists to this day.

Early settlement of the island was carried out mainly under the sponsorship of the Hudson's Bay Company whose lease from the Crown amounted to 7 shillings per year — that's roughly equal to £100.00 or $174 CDN today. Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, was founded in 1843 as Fort Victoria on the southern end of Vancouver Island by the Hudson's Bay Company's Chief Factor, Sir James Douglas. 

With Douglas's help, the Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Rupert on the north end of Vancouver Island in 1849. Both became centres of fur trade and trade between First Nations and solidified the Hudson's Bay Company's trading monopoly in the Pacific Northwest.

The settlement of Fort Victoria on the southern tip of Vancouver Island — handily south of the 49th parallel — greatly aided British negotiators to retain all of the islands when a line was finally set to mark the northern boundary of the United States with the signing of the Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1846. Vancouver Island became a separate British colony in 1858. British Columbia, exclusive of the island, was made a colony in 1858 and in 1866 the two colonies were joined into one — becoming a province of Canada in 1871 with Victoria as the capital.

Dan Bowen, Chair of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society (VIPS) did a truly splendid talk on the Fossils of Nootka Sound. With his permission, I have uploaded the talk to the ARCHEA YouTube Channel for all to enjoy. Do take a boo, he is a great presenter. Dan also graciously provided the photos you see here. The last of the photos you see here is from the August 2021 Nootka Fossil Field Trip. Photo: John Fam, Vice-Chair, Vancouver Paleontological Society (VanPS).

Know Before You Go — Nootka Trail

The Nootka Trail passes through the traditional lands of the Mowachaht/Muchalat First Nations who have lived here since always. They share this area with humpback and Gray whales, orcas, seals, sea lions, black bears, wolves, cougars, eagles, ravens, sea birds, river otters, insects and the many colourful intertidal creatures that you'll want to photograph.

This is a remote West Coast wilderness experience. Getting to Nootka Island requires some planning as you'll need to take a seaplane or water taxi to reach the trailhead. The trail takes 4-8 days to cover the 37 km year-round hike. The peak season is July to September. Permits are not required for the hike. 

Access via: Air Nootka floatplane, water taxi, or MV Uchuck III

• Dan Bowen, VIPS on the Fossils of Nootka: https://youtu.be/rsewBFztxSY
• https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sir-james-douglas
• file:///C:/Users/tosca/Downloads/186162-Article%20Text-199217-1-10-20151106.pdf
• Nootka Trip Planning: https://mbguiding.ca/nootka-trail-nootka-island/#overview

LOVE CAN TRAVEL ANYWHERE IN AN INSTANT

Nunatsiarmiut Mother and Child, Baffin Island, Nunavut

Warm light bathes this lovely Nunatsiarmiut mother and child from Baffin Island, Nunavut. 

They speak Inuktitut, the mother tongue of the majority of the Nunatsiarmiut who call Baffin Island home. 

Baffin is the largest island in the Arctic Archipelago in the territory of Nunavut in Canada's far north—the chilliest region of Turtle Island. 

As part of the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Baffin Island is home to a constellation of remote Inuit communities each with a deep cultural connection to the land—Iqaluit, Pond Inlet, Pangnirtung, Clyde River, Arctic Bay, Kimmirut and Nanisivik. 

The ratio of Inuit to non-Inuit here is roughly three to one and perhaps the reason why the Inuktitut language has remained intact and serves as the mother tongue for more than 36,000 residents. Inuktitut has several subdialects—these, along with a myriad of other languages—are spoken across the north.  

If you look at the helpful visual below you begin to get a feel for the diversity of these many tongues. The languages vary by region. There is the Iñupiaq of the Inupiatun/Inupiat; Inuvialuktun of the Inuinnaqtun, Natsilingmiutut, Kivallirmiutut, Aivilingmiutut, Qikiqtaaluk Uannanganii and Siglitun. Kalaallisut is spoken by many Greenlandic peoples though, in northwest Greenland, Inuktun is the language of the Inughuit.

We use the word Inuktitut when referring to a specific dialect and inuktut when referring to all the dialects of Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun.

Northern Language Map (Click to Enlarge)

Should you travel to the serene glacier-capped wilds and rolling tundra of our far north, you will want to dress for the weather and learn a few of the basics to put your best mukluk shod feet forward. 

The word for hello or welcome in Inuktitut is Atelihai—pronounced ahh-tee-lee-hi. And thank you is nakurmiik, pronounced na-kur-MIIK.  

Perhaps my favourite Inuktitut expression is Naglingniq qaikautigijunnaqtuq maannakautigi, pronounced NAG-ling-niq QAI-kau-ti-gi-jun-naqtuq MAAN-na-KAU-ti-gi. This tongue-twister is well worth the linguistic challenge as it translates to love can travel anywhere in an instant. Indeed it can. 

So much of our Indigenous culture is passed through stories, so language takes on special meaning in that context. It is true for all societies but especially true for the Inuit. Stories help connect the past to the present and future. They teach how to behave in society, engage with the world and how to survive in the environment. They also help to create a sense of belonging. 

You have likely seen or heard the word Eskimo used in older books to refer to the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit or Yupik. This misnomer is a colonial term derived from the Montagnais or Innu word ayas̆kimew—netter of snowshoes. 

It is a bit like meeting a whole new group of people who happen to wear shoes and referring to them all as cobblers—not as a nickname, but as a legal term to describe populations from diverse communities disregarding the way each self-refer. 

Inukshuk / Inuksuk Marker Cairn

For those who identify as Inupiaq or Yupik, the preferred term is Inuit meaning people—though some lingering use of the term Eskimo lives on. The Inuit as a group are made up of many smaller groups. 

The Inuit of Greenland self-refer as Kalaallit or Greenlanders when speaking Kalaallisut. 

The Tunumiit of Tunu (east Greenland), speak Tunumiit oraasiat ("East Greenlandic"); and the Inughuit of north Greenland, speak Inuktun "Polar Eskimo."

The Inupiat of Alaska, or real people, use Yupik as the singular for real person and yuk to simply mean person.

When taken all together, Inuit is used to mean all the peoples in reference to the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit and Yupik. Inuit is the plural of inuk or person. 

You likely recognize this word from inuksuk or inukshuk, pronounced ih-nook-suuk — the human-shaped stone cairns built by the Inuit, Iñupiat, Kalaallit, Yupik, and other peoples of the Arctic regions of northern Canada, Greenland, and Alaska—as helpful reference markers for hunters and navigation. 

The word inuksuk means that which acts in the capacity of a human, combining inuk or person and suk, as a human substitute. 

A World of Confusion

You may be disappointed to learn that our northern friends do not live in igloos. I remember answering the phone as a child and the fellow calling was hoping to speak to my parents about some wonderful new invention perfect for use in an igloo. 

The call came while I was in the kitchen of our family home in Port Hardy. He was disappointed to hear that I was standing in a wooden house with the standard four walls to a room and a handy roof topping it off. 

I also had my own room with Scooby-Doo wallpaper, but he was having nothing of it.

"Well, what about your neighbours? Surely, a few of them live in igloos..." 

It seems that some atlases in circulation at the time, and certainly the one he was looking at, simply blanketed everything north of the 49th parallel in a snowy white. His clearly showed an igloo sitting proudly in the centre of the province.

My cousin Shawn brought one such simplified book back from his elementary school in California. British Columbia had a nice image of a grizzly bear and a wee bit further up, a polar bear grinned smugly. 

British Columbia's beaver population would be sad to know that they did not inhabit the province though there were two chipper beavers with big bright smiles—one in Ontario and another gracing the province of Quebec. Further north, where folk do build igloos, their icy domes were curiously lacking. 

Igloos are used for winter hunting trips much the same way we use tents for camping. The Inuit do not have fifty words for snow—you can thank the ethnographer Franz Boas for that wee fabrication—but within the collective languages of the frozen north there are more than fifty words to describe it. And kisses are not nose-to-nose. To give a tender kiss or kunik to a loved one, you press your nose and upper lip to their forehead or cheek and rub gently. 

Fancy trying a wee bit of Inuktitut yourself? This link will bring you to a great place to start: https://inhabitmedia.com/inuitnipingit/

Inuit Language Map:  By Noahedits - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0. If you want to the image full size, head to this link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85587388

NATURAL DYES: INDIGO

Natural dyes are dyes or colourants derived from plants, invertebrates, or minerals. The majority of natural dyes are vegetable dyes from plant sources — roots, berries, bark, leaves, and wood — and other biological sources such as fungi and lichens.

Archaeologists have found evidence of textile dyeing dating back to the Neolithic period. In China, dyeing with plants, barks and insects has been traced back more than 5,000 years and looks to be our first attempt at the practice of chemistry.

The essential process of dyeing changed little over time. Typically, the dye material is put in a pot of water and then the textiles to be dyed are added to the pot, which is heated and stirred until the colour is transferred. Sometimes, we use workers with stout marching legs to mix this up.

Traditional dye works still operate in many parts of the world. There is a revival of using natural indigo in modern Egypt — although their indigo dye is mostly imported. The same is true further south in Sudan. They've been importing cloth from Upper Egypt as far back as we have written records and continue the practice of the cloth and dye imports today. Clean white cotton is more the style of western Sudan and Chad, but they still like to throw in a bit of colour.

Traditional Dye Vats

So do the folk living in North Africa. Years ago, I was travelling in Marrakesh and saw many men with noticeably orange, blueish or purplish legs. It wasn't one or two but dozens of men and I'd wondered why this was.

My guide took me to the top of a building so I could look down on rows and rows of coloured vats. In every other one was a man marching in place to work the dye into the wool. Their legs took on the colour from their daily march in place in huge tubs of liquid dye and sheared wool. 

This wool would be considered textile fibre dyed before spinning — dyed in the wool — but most textiles are yarn-dyed or piece-dyed after weaving. In either case, the finished product is quite fetching even if the dyer's legs are less so. 

Many natural dyes require the use of chemicals called mordants to bind the dye to the textile fibres; tannin from oak galls, salt, natural alum, vinegar, and ammonia from stale urine were staples of the early dyers.

Many mordants and some dyes themselves produce strong odours. Urine is a bit stinky. Not surprisingly, large-scale dyeworks were often isolated in their own districts.

Woad, Isatis tinctoria

Plant-based dyes such as Woad, Isatis tinctoria, indigo, saffron, and madder were raised commercially and were important trade goods in the economies of Asia and Europe. 

Across Asia and Africa, patterned fabrics were produced using resist dyeing techniques to control the absorption of colour in piece-dyed cloth.

Dyes such as cochineal and logwood, Haematoxylum campechianum, were brought to Europe by the Spanish treasure fleets, and the dyestuffs of Europe were carried by colonists to America.

Throughout history, people have dyed their textiles using common, locally available materials, but scarce dyestuffs that produced brilliant and permanent colours such as the natural invertebrate dyes. Crimson kermes became highly prized luxury items in the ancient and medieval world. Red, yellow and orange shades were fairly easy to procure as they exist as common colourants of plants. It was blue that people sought most of all and purple even more so.

Indigofera tinctoria, a member of the legume or bean family proved just the trick. This lovely plant —  named by the famous Swedish botanist Carl Linneaus, the father of formalized binomial nomenclature — grows in tropical to temperate Asia and subtropical regions, including parts of Africa.

The plants contain the glycoside indican, a molecule that contains a nitrogenous indoxyl molecule with some glucose playing piggyback. 

Indigo dye is a product of the reaction of indoxyl by a mild oxidizing agent, usually just good old oxygen.

To make the lovely blue and purple dyes, we harvest the plants and ferment them in vats with urine and ash. The fermentation splits off the glucose, a wee bit of oxygen mixes in with the air (with those sturdy legs helping) and we get indigotin — the happy luxury dye of royalty, emperors and kings.

While much of our early dye came from plants — now it is mostly synthesized — other critters played a role. Members of the large and varied taxonomic family of predatory sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks, commonly known as murex snails were harvested by the Phoenicians for the vivid dye known as Tyrian purple.

While the extant specimens maintained their royal lineage for quite some time; at least until we were able to manufacture synthetic dyes, it was their fossil brethren that first captured my attention. There are about 1,200 fossil species in the family Muricidae. 

They first appear in the fossil record during the Aptian of the Cretaceous. Their ornate shells fossilize beautifully. I first read about them in Addicott's Miocene Gastropods and Biostratigraphy of the Kern River Area, California. It is a wonderful survey of 182 early and middle Miocene gastropod taxa.

References:

George E. Radwin and Anthony D'Attilio: The Murex shells of the World, Stanford University press, 1976, ISBN 0-8047-0897-5

Pappalardo P., Rodríguez-Serrano E. & Fernández M. (2014). "Correlated Evolution between Mode of Larval Development and Habitat in Muricid Gastropods". PLoS ONE 9(4): e94104. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0094104

Miocene Gastropods and Biostratigraphy of the Kern River Area, California; United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 642  

YORKSHIRE HISTORY: FOSSILS TEXTILES AND URINE

Yorkshire Coast

You may recall the eight-metre Type Specimen of the ichthyosaur, Temnodontosaurus crassimanus, found in an alum quarry in Yorkshire, northern England.

The Yorkshire Museum was given this important ichthyosaur fossil back in 1857 when alum production was still a necessary staple of the textile industry. Without that industry, many wonderful specimens would likely never have been unearthed.

These quarries are an interesting bit of British history as they helped shape the Yorkshire Coast, created an entirely new industry and gave us more than a fixative for dyes. With them came the discovery of many remarkable fossil specimens and, oddly, local employment in the collection of urine.

In the 16th century, alum was essential in the textile industry as a fixative for dyes. 

By the first half of the 16th century, the clothing of the Low Countries, German states, and Scandinavia had developed in a different direction than that of England, France, and Italy, although all absorbed the sobering and formal influence of Spanish dress after the mid-1520s. Those fashions held true until the Inquisition when religious persecution, politics and fashion underwent a much-needed overhaul to something lighter.

Fashion in Medieval Livonia (1521): Albrecht Dürer

Elaborate slashing was popular, especially in Germany. In the depiction you see here, an artist pokes a bit of fun at Germanic fashion from the time. Bobbin lace arose from passementerie in the mid-16th century in Flanders, the Flemish Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium. Black was increasingly worn for the most formal occasions.

This century saw the rise of the ruff, which grew from a mere ruffle at the neckline to immense, slightly silly, cartwheel shapes. They adorned the necklines of the ultra-wealthy and uber-stylish men and women of the age.

At their most extravagant, ruffs required wire supports and were made of fine Italian reticella, a cutwork linen lace. You can imagine the many hours of skill and patience that would have gone into each piece to create the artful framework of these showy lace collars.

16th Century Fashion / Ruff Collars and Finery

In contrast to all that ruff, lace and cutwork linen, folk needed dyed fabrics. And to fix those dyes, they needed Alum. For a time, Italy was the source of that alum.

The Pope held a tidy monopoly on the industry, supplying both alum and the best dyes. He also did a nice trade in colourful and rare pigments for painting. And for a time, all was well with dandy's strutting their finery to the local fops in Britain.

All that changed during the Reformation. Great Britain, heathens as they were, were cut off from their Papal source and needed to fend for themselves.

The good Thomas Challoner took up the charge and set up Britain's first Alum works in Guisborough. Challoner looked to palaeontology for inspiration. Noticing that the fossils found on the Yorkshire coast were very similar to those found in the Alum quarries in Europe, he hatched a plan to set-up an alum industry on home soil. 

As the industry grew, sites along the coast were favoured as access to the shales and subsequent transportation was much easier.

Alum House, Photo: Joyce Dobson and Keith Bowers

Alum was extracted from quarried shales through a large scale and complicated process which took months to complete. 

The process involved extracting then burning huge piles of shale for 9 months, before transferring it to leaching pits to extract an aluminium sulphate liquor. This was sent along channels to the alum works where human urine was added.

At the peak of alum production, the industry required 200 tonnes of urine every year. That's the equivalent of all the potty visits of more than 1,000 people. Yes, strange but true.

The steady demand was hard to keep up with and urine became an imported resource from markets as far away as London and Newcastle upon Tyne in the northeast of England. Wooden buckets were left on street corners for folk to do their business then carted back to the south to complete the alum extraction process. The urine and alum would be mixed into a thick liquid. Once mixed, the aromatic slosh was left to settle and then the alum crystals were removed.

I'm not sure if this is a folktale or plain truth, but as the story goes, one knows when the optimum amount of alum had been extracted as you can pop an egg in the bucket and it floats on its own.

Alum House. Photo: Ann Wedgewood and Keith Bowers

The last Alum works on the Yorkshire Coast closed in 1871. This was due to the invention of manufacturing synthetic alum in 1855, then subsequently the creation of aniline dyes that contained their own fixative.

Many sites along the Yorkshire Coast bear evidence of the alum industry. These include Loftus Alum Quarries where the cliff profile is drastically changed by extraction and huge shale tips remain.

Further South are the Ravenscar Alum Works, which are well-preserved and enable visitors to visualize the processes which took place. The photos you see here are of Alum House at Hummersea. The first shows the ruin of Alum House printed on a postcard from 1906. The second (bottom) image shows the same ruin from on high with Cattersty Point in the background.

The good folk at the National Trust in Swindon are to thank for much of the background shared here. If you'd like to learn more about the Yorkshire area or donate to a very worthy charity, follow their link below.

Reference: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/yorkshire-coast/features/how-alum-shaped-the-yorkshire-coast

HUMPBACK WHALES: MEGAPTERA NOVAENGLIAE

Look deep into the knowing eye of this magnificent one. He is a Humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae, a species of baleen whale for whom I hold a special place in my heart. 

Baleens are toothless whales who feed on plankton and other wee oceanic tasties that they consume through their baleens, a specialised filter of flexible keratin plates that frame their mouth and fit within their robust jaws.

Baleen whales, the mysticetes, split from toothed whales, the Odontoceti, around 34 million years ago. The split allowed our toothless friends to enjoy a new feeding niche and make their way in a sea with limited food resources. There are fifteen species of baleen whales who inhabit all major oceans. Their number include our humbacks, grays, right whales and the massive blue whale. Their territory runs as a wide band running from the Antarctic ice edge to 81°N latitude. These filter feeders

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, and my cousins on my father's side, whales are known as g̱wa̱'ya̱m. Both the California grey and the Humpback whale live on the coast. Only a small number of individuals in First Nation society had the right to harpoon a whale. This is a practice from many years ago. It was generally only the Chief who was bestowed this great honour. Humpback whales like to feed close to shore and enter the local inlets. Around Vancouver Island and along the coast of British Columbia, this made them a welcome food source as the long days of winter passed into Spring.

Humpback whales are rorquals, members of the Balaenopteridae family that includes the blue, fin, Bryde's, sei and minke whales. The rorquals are believed to have diverged from the other families of the suborder Mysticeti during the middle Miocene. 

While cetaceans were historically thought to have descended from mesonychids—which would place them outside the order Artiodactyla—molecular evidence supports them as a clade of even-toed ungulates—our dear Artiodactyla. 

It is one of the larger rorqual species, with adults ranging in length from 12–16 m (39–52 ft) and weighing around 25–30 metric tons (28–33 short tons). The humpback has a distinctive body shape, with long pectoral fins and a knobbly head. It is known for breaching and other distinctive surface behaviours, making it popular with whale watchers and the lucky few who see them from the decks of our local ferries.

Both male and female humpback whales vocalize, but only males produce the long, loud, complex "song" for which the species is famous. Males produce a complex soulful song lasting 10 to 20 minutes, which they repeat for hours at a time. I imagine Gregorian Monks vocalizing their chant with each individual melody strengthening and complimenting that of their peers. All the males in a group produce the same song, which differed in each season. Its purpose is not clear, though it may help induce estrus in females and bonding amongst the males.

Humpback Whale, Megaptera novaeangliae

Found in oceans and seas around the world, humpback whales typically migrate up to 25,000 km (16,000 mi) each year. 

They feed in polar waters and migrate to tropical or subtropical waters to breed and give birth, fasting and living off their fat reserves. Their diet consists mostly of krill and small fish. 

Humpbacks have a diverse repertoire of feeding methods, including the bubble net technique.

Humpbacks are a friendly species that interact with other cetaceans such as bottlenose dolphins. They are also friendly and oddly protective of humans. You may recall hearing about an incident off the Cook Islands a few years back. Nan Hauser was snorkelling and ran into a tiger shark. Two adult humpback whales rushed to her aid, blocking the shark from reaching her and pushing her back towards the shore. We could learn a thing or two from their kindness. We have not been as good to them as they have been to us.

Like other large whales, the humpback was a tasty and profitable target for the whaling industry. My grandfather and uncle participated in that industry out of Coal Harbour on northern Vancouver Island back in the 1950s. So did many of my First Nation cousins. My cousin John Lyon has told me tales of those days and the slippery stench of that work.

Six whaling stations operated on the coast of British Columbia between 1905 and 1976. Two of these stations were located at Haida Gwaii, one at Rose Harbour and the other at Naden Harbour. Over 9,400 large whales were taken from the waters around Haida Gwaii. The catch included blue whales, fin whales, sei whales, humpback whales, sperm whales and right whales. In the early years of the century, primarily humpback whales were taken. In later years, fin whales and sperm whales dominated the catch. 

Whales were hunted off South Moresby in Haida Gwaii, on the north side of Holberg Inlet in the Quatsino Sound region. It was the norm at the time and a way to make a living, especially for those who had hoped to work in the local coal mine but lost their employment when it shut down. 

While my First Nations relatives hunted whales in small numbers and many years ago, my Norwegian relatives participated in the hunt on a scale that nearly led to their extinction before the process was banned. The Coal Harbour Whaling Station closed in 1967. Once it had closed, my grandfather Einar Eikanger, my mother's father, took to fishing and my uncle Harry lost his life the year before when he slipped and fell over the side of the boat. He was crushed between the hull and a Humpback in rough seas. 

Humpback populations have partially recovered since that time to build their population up to 80,000 animals worldwide—but entanglement in fishing gear, collisions with ships, and noise pollution continue to negatively impact the species. So be kind if you see them. Turn your engine off and see if you can hear their soulful cries echoing in the water.

I did up a video on Humpback Whales over on YouTube so you could see them in all their majesty. Here is the link: https://youtu.be/_Vbta7kQNoM