Holy cow does time fly by! The month of July had just started and I blinked and now it’s over! I got so caught up in the shenanigans at Bamfield that I’m a bit behind on the blogs, but boy do I have a lot to catch up on! Such a fun month, full of wacky adventures in the Pacific Northwest.

After an incredible first week or so at Bamfield, I had settled into a routine with Sara and Steph in the lab – wake up early, spend the morning feeding fish and checking bucket temperatures, break for lunch, either do more labwork in the afternoon or have some free time, then back to the lab after dinner for another couple hours, fishing between 10 and 11 every night.

Sunday and Monday’s lab work actually went by smoothly – the temperatures of the buckets were relatively correct, so little fiddling had to be done and we finished the morning work in good time. On Sunday, we had dreams of snorkeling but the overcast weather and lack of rowboats to get to the West side (where the beach was) foiled our plans so I spent the afternoon doing expense reports instead. Not ideal, but it’s good to do some business every now and again. The evening’s lab work sailed by and we had a gorgeous sunset to end our day. Monday was also pretty straightforward, with more lab work (and always, new problems to overcome). With such a complex experiment with so many running parts, it’s important to appreciate the easy days when they occur. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned at Bamfield thus far is the patience and persistence to run a research project on a large scale. Watching Sara adapt and overcome the array of problems she’s encountered with the project, I gained a new respect for those conducting research. It’s never straightforward, never goes according to plan, and always requires an open mind and quick thinking.

 

 

Tuesday turned out to be a hectic day. I had originally just planned on the usual lab work, but after about 30 minutes in the lab, I received an email from Siobhan (the DSO) about some collection dives she was hoping to do that morning. I jumped at the chance to get back in the frigid water (who am I??) and headed down to the locker to get ready to dive. I would be going out with a solid group of lady divers to collect an array of sculpins for the fish biology class. We set out for 2 morning dives at the Ross Islands, across the sound from the research station. Although the first dive yielded no sculpins from my dive team, it was great to be back in the water and checking out the cool marine flora and fauna. The second dive was full of sculpins and we managed to bag a few good specimens for the class. We motored back to the station and handed over the fish before breaking for a quick lunch. We hadn’t collected as many fish as we’d liked, so wanted to do one more dive to get a few more fish. The visibility wasn’t the greatest, but we managed to grab a couple more fish and the class was happy with our catch. We ended around 4 and I thought I’d swing by the lab to check on Sara and Steph – today they were not only doing the normal feeding/temperature checks, but cleaning the buckets as well as doing individual respiration tests on each of the 40+ fish. It wasn’t the best day for me to miss out in the lab, but Sara wanted me to dive and the least I could do was swing by after I was done and see where everyone was at. I was expecting the lab to be deserted, but Sara and Steph were still there! They had been working almost straight from 8 am to 4 pm and still hadn’t finished. I hopped right back in to help and once I got in the groove, we cruised through the last 20 fish that needed to be tested. After a solid 3 more hours of work, we had gone through all the fish and they all had nice clean buckets to sleep in that night. We took a quick break to wolf down some delicious dinner Katie and Chett made us, then it was back in the lab to feed the fish and do minor temperature adjustments. An inconspicuous Tuesday turned into a long and exhausting day both in the water and in the lab, and I fell asleep quite soundly that night.

 

Wednesday was Canada Day! However lab work stops for no holiday, and the majority of the day was spent doing the normal work with the fishes. I did, however, find time to dress up in my Canadian tuxedo and do a mini photo shoot in celebration – I mean, who knows the next time I may be in Canada for Canada Day?

 

Thursday started like any other day in the lab until I got an email from Siobhan around 9 am asking for divers to help with a collection dive that day. Naturally, I jumped at another chance to get in the water and flew down to the foreshore to get kitted up (after making sure Sara was ok with me ditching, which she was). Almost no one else could dive so I was teamed with Chad, the assistant DSO and photographer extraordinaire to do more sculpin collection. Our first dive was right off the Bamfield dock and once we were geared up, we hopped right in to catch some fish. The visibility was pretty low, so we slowly moved about, searching for the incredibly well camouflaged fish amongst the sand and kelp. I managed to single-handedly snag a nice sized buffalo sculpin and later in the dive, Chad’s eagle eye found a cute grunt sculpin and he managed to grab that one. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any other fish and called the dive at 40 minutes. After a quick lunch, we decided to head back out to the sites at the Ross Islands, since we had such good luck there the other day. On the first of those dives, we managed to capture a good number of fish. The highlight was when I found a pretty good sized Brown Irish Lord and we corralled him towards a bag. Chad shooed him in and he bolted in so quickly I was taken by surprise and let out a squeal and the fish promptly took his chance to bolt right back out of the bag as quickly as he moved in. It was unfortunate to lose such a good specimen but I couldn’t stop giggling after the incident – it was too comical. We did one more dive at the Ross Islands, this time to collect seastars and after a quick 20 minute dive, we had bagged enough to call it. It was such a great day of diving and collecting fish turned out to me more adventurous and tricky then I thought it would be!

Friday came with the anticipation of Saturday, when the annual Bamfield Intertidal Golf Tournament was being held. It’s a fundraiser hosted by the local fire department to raise funds for the department, as it’s completely run by volunteers. Friday was also the last day of Sara’s first set of experiments with the black rockfish and we had a lot of work to do. The fish still were fed in the morning (a last supper of sorts) and temperatures were recorded. We then had the odious task of measuring, photographing, weighing, killing and dissecting all 40 or so fish. We set to work on the task at hand, but to lighten the mood, we gave each fish a name and a theme song (based on popular rap artists and inspired by the fish I had earlier given the name “Notorious B.I.G.” to because of his large size). It made the work go by much faster and once we developed our routine, we managed to euthanize all fish by the early afternoon. We then spent some time working on our team costumes for golf the next day and had an early night to appreciate the chance.

Saturday came bright and early and everyone’s spirits were high as we set out for intertidal golf. This once a year event is held at a local mud flat that is only exposed during certain low tides and the fire department sets up a golf course of 9 holes that you have to complete before the incoming tide floods the course. I met up with Katie, Chett, baby Isaac, and Sara at the foreshore, and we were all dressed to kill. Katie had come up with the genius idea of being “Diaper Vader (Isaac) and the Storm Poopers (the rest of us)”

 

We had handcrafted storm trooper masks (from Star Wars) and Katie even made a little Darth Vader helmet and cape for Isaac. We were shuttled by boat to the flat, where we paid our entrance fee, selected our clubs, and proceeded to golf. It was fun to see so much of the community turn out (and in such wacky costumes!) to support the fire department and have a morning of fun in the mud.

After spending the morning learning I’m not gifted at golf, we headed back to the station to hang out with some of the locals and enjoy our free day of the month. The evening involved a salmon dinner and dance, also hosted as a fundraising event for the fire department, which a group of us all attend to continue supporting the fire department and get a better taste of local culture. We had a fun night of delicious salmon and dancing to a local band, and my night off was well appreciated.

 

Sunday morning broke sooner than I’d hoped for and much more creepily than I’d expected it to. All of the Pacific Northwest had been going through an unusually dry summer and 3 large fires had broken out on Vancouver Island, blanketing the sky in cloud and ash and casting an eerie, orange-like glow about town, even though the fires were quite a ways away. And of course, research stops for no fire, so we were back in the lab at 8 am, starting Sara’s next round of experiments with rockfish. This time she was running the same temperature trials but on juvenile copper rockfish, who have slightly different recruiting behaviors than the black rockfish. It was a long day of measuring, photographing and weighing all 64 fish, but we managed to get them in their new homes by mid afternoon. It was a long day but our team had pulled through and managed the work in good time and good spirits.

Another week in Bamfield had flown by and I was pretty much head over heels in love with the rugged wilderness, friendly folks, and cold water diving. At this point, I was pretty happy to have committed 3.5 weeks to this place, it was turning to an experience of a lifetime and I was forging stellar relationships and experiencing so much of what Vancouver Island has to offer.