I’m now onto my second week of my time at the Bamfield fall program! Here are some pictures from the past few days

A day at Brady’s Beach:

Bradys Beach is on the West side of Bamfield and is known for its beautiful scenery.

A panorama picture of Brady’s beach

We first had to row over to  the west side and then walk for 20 minutes to get there. See the sign for brady’s beach on the right

The beach had super fine sand, and lots of rock outcroppings with trees growing on the top. There was also a bar (pictured right) that was empty  on the way there, but on the way back hosted a small rave with people dressed in animal costumes.

Me in the sand

There were tons of rock swimming pools with fish in them, so we took a while to look around at those. There was also an elevated compostable toilet (right)

On the trip back we were waiting for our turn on the rowboat, when some fall-program alumni offered to ferry us back to campus. There were some cute dogs on the boat and it was pretty sweet zipping past our classmates who were in the row boats.

Algae class:

The first third of the fall program focuses on seaweeds. I’ve taken one class on seaweeds before – and loved it, so am really enjoying this one as well. And since we’re in Bamfield, we have the luxury of taking tons of field trips!

Our first field trip was to a rocky beach that required a 20 minute boat ride and a 30 minute hike through a smelly mud flat and a forest. It was POURING down, but was a good test of my rain gear which kept me almost completely dry!

On the beach collecting seaweeds. Our professor holding a giant bull kelp (pictured left) and a seaweed called dead man’s fingers (pictured right)

Some mega tidepools at this beach, its hard to tell from this picture, but this one was about 3 m deep.

Found a giant mussel

The next day we went out again and collected more seaweed, all of which ended up in the lab seawater tables, ready for us to study!

A picture of the microscopes that we used to identify all the seaweeds after we got back to lab. PS, identifying seaweeds is really hard

An evening at Pachena:

The next evening we went to Pachena Bay, which is a 10 minute drive from campus and also has fine sand.

A fire was built and s’mores were made!

Studying:

It’s not all fun and games!

Stormy day:

A huge storm happened, the winds felt as strong as a hurricane and the rain was coming down horizontally. The power went out a few times, but BMSC has backup generators so no problem there. We had to sign up for shifts to bail out the rowboat (4x a day),  because it would fill with water and sink otherwise. Here’s some pictures of us doing just that at 11 pm!

The next morning:

After a stormy day, the morning was beautiful! We went to Pachena Beach again and went for a swin in the crashing waves. It was freezing but refreshing!

Is that a bear cave on the right?

A bit squished on our way (we had to fit 7 people into a 5 seater car, but luckily there’s no police in Bamfield so we weren’t too worried about a ticket. And on the right is us walking along the beach.

 

Thats it for now, thanks for reading until the end!