Author Archives: lauren gill

Winter is coming! Bamfield update

Hello! We’re coming up to the end of the fall semester at Bamfield, and we have about 20 days left here at BMSC. We’ve finished up our ecology class and are starting a new one on animal structure and function. We get to play with a lot of cool invertebrates. We’ve experienced two ‘atmospheric rivers’ here, meaning a TON of rain. And a few windy storms. Having a lot of fun here but also looking forward to coming home and eating some sushi. Enjoy the pictures!

First up – field trip! We went snorkelling in Grappler Inlet, which was fun but also very cold despite the sunny skies. We saw some sea stars, shells, a seal (not under the water unfortunately), and listened to popping shrimp. The popping sound was very similar to the sound you hear on tropical reefs, but they don’t know what type of animal makes the sound in Bamfield. Cool!

Looking at sea snails under a microscope. We were assigned phylum Mollusca for our group project – which basically meant looking at snails, limpets, sea slugs and chitons. For this experiment (pictured above) we put a snail on a glass slide and flipped it over so that we could se the underside under the microscope. The big white/yellow soft tissue is called the foot, which it uses to move. This type of snail is a carnivore and drills a hole into bivalve shells with its mouthpart and then sucks out the meat.

Chitons under a microscope! These guys are slow moving, tough shelled and look like the outside of a kiwi. The underside is soft and fleshy (pictured right).

Pretty sea slug pictured left (also known as a nudibranch), and a scallop pictured right. When I put the scallop back in the water it started swimming and snapping vigorously at the surface as if it was trying to bite me. Serves me right for taking it out of the water I guess!

Bear print on the beach! Almost looked fake. And on a rainy hike (right), where we found a large uprooted tree. Pretty spectacular.

Warning – gross tunicates. We are finishing up our directed studies project on trying to kill this invasive species of tunicate, nicknamed sea vomit. We heat treated them and then waited 3 weeks to see if they died. One of our (very smelly) tasks was to assess mold cover on them. And for some preliminary results – it seems that when heat treated at 70 and 90 degrees, they all died which is great news for the aquaculture farmers trying to get this gross stuff off their equipment.

A picture from a walk on a cold, sunny day. Looks quite idyllic. Days like this make up for the relentless rain!

And a beautiful sunset later in the day!

Another beautiful sunset on a field trip!

And a trip down to the docks to collect some invertebrates. Pictured left is a tube worm chandelier, which we pulled up from the ocean. When underwater, worms that live in each of the tubes extend little tufts to feed. Google “northern feather duster worm” to see what they look like back in the water. Then we found a flat worm (pictured middle). On the right is our bucket that had all the species we found that day. There were probably 30 species just in this one bucket!

The ‘movie’ room at Bamfield. Its an empty dorm room with a sheet over the window and a projector! We watched Romeo and Juliet.

A really nice letter from Coco and Chacha! The whale theme is very fitting

Christmas time in Bamfield! They had a happy hour on Friday night where the students helped put up the Christmas decorations, it all feels very festive!

And some Gingerbread cookie decorating! A lot of talented artists among us at Bamfield, I am not one of them to say the least…. (mine pictured right)

 

That is all for now, thanks for reading the blog!

 

Mid-way update!

Hello family + friends! Poppin into update you once again about my time in Bamfield. I’ve started taking another course here – marine ecology, and it involves a lot of computer work and coding. I’ve also started my final “directed studies” project, where we pick any research question and develop a project to answer it.  Otherwise, its been rather rainy here… anyways enjoy the pictures, hope you are all doing well!

First up – sunset walks at Pachena Bay! And next, the view from classroom!

 

First up we have some field work pictures! We had a class project where we had to make an ID guide about a certain species – our group got barnacles. Needless to say, I know more about barnacles now than I ever wanted to!

Here is some cool barnacle footage I shot, the barnacle is feeding with a worm going by.

This was me + my group for the barnacle assignment! It was a very wet day

We also have been experimenting for our final project on D. vexillum – this orange slime-like tunicate that has invaded the waters of BC and grows under docks and along the seafloor. It is originally from Japan and came here by hitchhiking on ship hulls. Our project is looking at the best way to kill it since it grows on all the oyster aquaculture gear and is a real nuisance – we’re trying out hot temperatures and freshwater as removal methods. On the left is a picture of one of our samples in Tupperware (one of 80!),

Us collecting from the docks

 

Visit to the Sugsaw salmon hatchery! What a cool day. We first had to get to the hatchery by crossing this precarious bridge (pictured left) which was a slippery log across a river… pretty cool! We saw some salmon in holding tanks, they are about to spawn.

On the left is a fish egg counter, they scoop up the eggs and count rows of 10! On the right is us in the salmon river right next to the hatchery. Salmon kept hitting our legs and it was the weirdest feeling!

Once the salmons are ready to spawn they kill the female and open up her belly and drop her eggs on to trays that look like these. Then they manually fertilize them and leave them to develop in these trays until they are baby fish. They are then removed, stored in tanks for a while to grow, and then released into the ocean. The reason they do this is to a) take pressure off the wild populations of salmon and b) to support the sport fishing industry.

Another cool thing I learned was that fish from hatcheries have much worse instincts then wild fish (ie they are more likely to lay their eggs in the wrong places, choose the worst males to mate with, and go back to the wrong rivers). So they try to keep the wild fish as separate from the hatchery fish as possible so they don’t interbreed and “dilute” the wild fish instincts.

And lastly – and coolest – we saw 5 bears!! The hatchery is super remote, and the bears love salmon, so we saw lots of them by the river. My favourite was seeing a baby bear in a tree, when the mom heard us she ran up from the river and started to make “chuffing” sounds to warn us. We also saw lots of dead salmon in the river (after they spawn, they die). Watch the video above for more!

Some delicious cookies from my English grandparents! Yummy!

And a scenic picture from a field trip on a rainy day!

 

Thanks for reading! Hope all is well 🙂

Kelp, Cougars and Cooking – one month update

I’ve now spent one month in Bamfield – and its been an absolute blast. I am writing this blog post from Vancouver as I am home for Thanksgiving, but will be travelling back to Bamfield on Monday morning! Take a look at the pictures:

(and in case you missed my week 2 update click here to read)


Off on another field trip to Wizard Islet – departed right before sunrise so we got to see the view from the water, another day of algae collecting!

 

Saw a dead humpback whale on the way (pictured left), the smell was noticeable. The carcass was decaying on the beach, it had apparently been hit by a fishing boat. And a very blurry picture of seals on the rocks on the right

Measuring tide heights with long stadia poles, and collecting algae for future experiments

Cougar sightings on campus – this one was spotted by some students in the library. There appear to be 1 mom and 2 cougar cubs that frequent the campus, we were warned to travel in groups to avoid any encounters. The cubs are known to be more dangerous, since they can’t control their aggression/ differentiate humans as well. I’m hoping that I do not run into any of these guys!

Truth and Reconciliation Day – we volunteered at a pole raising ceremony hosted by the Huu-ay-aht community (pole pictured left). It was an amazing experience and an honour to attend. Lunch was also great – salmon and herring roe. Pictured right are the elders that were victims of the residential school system, the ceremony ended with song and dance.

A visit to Louis Druehl’s kelp shed – the home of Canadian Kelp Resources. Pictured left is the kelp shed where they dry out the kelp they collect from the waters around Bamfield. They dry bull kelp, giant kelp, and Kombu. Pictured on the right is the wooden contraption with nails that is used to hang the seaweed blades. They do all the drying and packaging by hand, and sell to health food stores nationally.

No visit to a kelp shed is complete without some tasters! Pictured on the left is dried bull kelp, it was crunchy and VERY salty. And then some kelp brownies! These were surprisingly delicious as the bull kelp adds a salty rich flavour and combined with the sweetness of the brownie, it was a treat. Had to go back for seconds.

Speaking of food, check out the steak we had for dinner one night. Pretty amazing

Experimenting with seaweeds using a $10 million flume, which is like a lazy river for seaweeds, and measures drag force. The flume was 2 stories up, and we could walk underneath and see the seaweed being pulled by waves (middle). Then we layed them out on the floor to measure area (pictured right), I won’t bore you with the details but seaweeds have some pretty cool adaptations for dealing with huge waves!

Top Chef – algae edition. Competition to make the best seaweed dish, we made Foccacia L’alga, which was focaccia with seaweed sprinkled on top. It was really delicious. Some people made grilled cheese and kelp sandwiches, bubble tea with seaweed straws, and dumplings.

Another day, another sunrise field trip. Can’t complain when you get to call this school!

Bear sighting from the water! Coming out at low tide to forage in the intertidal

Rainbow!

Finished off the week by investigating this orange snot-like substance which is an animal called Didemnum vexillum. This little guy is the focus of our directed studies project, which involves finding the best way to kill it, since its an invasive species and biofouls aquaculture gear. Pretty gnarly!

Thanks for reading, and see you in another month or so!

Week 2 in Bamfield

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!

 

 

Arriving in Bamfield!

Hello family and friends! I’ve now been in Bamfield, BC for 4 days (even though it feels like 4 weeks as they keep us super busy) and its one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen! I’ll be spending the entire fall semester here at the Bamfield Marine Sciences Center (until December 18). Take a look at what I’ve done so far:

Sep 6:

Traveled to Bamfield via 1 hour 45 minute ferry and 3 hour bus ride. The bus ride is 1 hour on paved road and 2 hours on an 80 km gravel logging road full of pot holes – so as you can imagine – very bumpy!

My room!

Sep 7:

Walked into the town of Bamfield (15 minutes) and saw the view from the marina

In the evening went to Pachena Bay with the whole class of 24 students – beautiful sandy beach with bioluminescent plankton! Also when the sun went down there was an amazing view of the stars

Had a campfire at Pachena Bay – the campfire ban was lifted today! The fire was made out of driftwood found on the beach and some skilled people who built it 🙂

Sep 8:

At BMSC they have long lines of rope into the ocean that have all types of cool stuff on them – tube worms, crabs and a whole lot of this orange slime called tunicates

Me pulling some of these lines out of the water – they were pretty heavy!

Taking a whirl in the row boats, went to the West side of Bamfield which is water access only! They have a cute store over there that sells food, rain gear and liquor – everything a local needs to survive in Bamfield.

Mysterious fog and row boat oars

Sep 9:

Cold water snorkelling! We got our wet suits on today and hopped into the water with our snorkels. I wish I had some underwater photos as it was spectacular. Notably, I saw tons of starfish (some bigger than a dinner plate), normal fish, crabs, and colourful sea cucumbers. We were also able to snorkel through kelp beds which feels like you are flying over over a forest of tall kelp trees. Water was surprisingly clear and there was a lot to see, plus the wetsuits kept us warm and super buoyant.

Looking through tide pools

Sep 10:

Guided tour of the ancinet Kiixin Village and Fortress National Historic Site which is now home to the Huu-ay-aht First Nations peoples. Our guide (pictured in blue vest) was lovely, and told us her about the history of the Huu-ay-aht First Nations and their struggles with the Canadian government and trauma inflicted through residential schools.

After walking on the board walk through the forest, we came out into this beautiful beach called “second beach” that our guide called her hidden oasis.

Someone else has been on this beach! Bear print in the sand

Walked along coastline for a bit – the brown dots on the water (left) are bull kelp, and some cool rock formations (right)

Me in my new rain gear

After a 30 minute beach trek we arrived at the historical site – which is illegal to enter without a guide (pictured on sign)

Archway of a house (left) which is many many years old. There was around 8 massive houses in the village and around 25-30 people lived in each house. Incredible building techniques were used to haul these heavy beams up. Pictured on the right is another beam dating at least back to the 1880s. the houses had a dug down floor – and for chiefs, the lower their house was dug down, the more respected they were.

Whale bones from a humpback whale (pictured left, three brown bones behind the ferns) that are still left in the historical site. They actually still smelled kind of fishy too! The first nations people would harpoon around 1-2 humpback whales per year. Pictured right is the hike back up to the head of the trail.

This was located right in front of the houses. These rocks were used as defensive lookout points, and on a clear day you can see every island around you and very far up the coast.

Van ride back to campus

In the afternoon they ferried us over to the water access only West side of Bamfield. Pictured is a view of the BMSC campus from the west side docks. It only takes around 3 minutes by boat across the small inlet, which is inhabited by seals and sea lions.

Cute shell succulants at the Bamfield art gallery, which is a small art shop attached to a resident’s house. The man who lived there was super friendly and said he was glad to see students again after covid.

Taking a stroll along the board walk that stretches the whole west side of Bamfield. Apparently back in the day, a random barge of wood showed up in Bamfield – nobody claimed it and none of the residents could figure out who’s it was. So after 5 years of it sitting there, they decided to build a board walk out of the wood! Turns out, a few years later, the government came in wondering where their wood went – and at that point had to accept the fact that it had already been whipped into a board walk! To justify it in their books, they designated it as a highway, meaning that this cute boardwalk in Bamfield is the sole walking-only highway in Canada!

A view of Bamfield – the dock on the right is the ‘parking lot’ for the store and the red roof on the left is the small grocery market

That’s all for now, cheers!

Resources

Below are a few awesome resources I discovered while in this course:

Global Fishing Watch – This is an awesome website where you can actually track fishing vessels in real time. Found out about this website from Commander Tony Long:

Home

Oceanwise Food Labels: Came across this website in our tutorial for food labelling. It gives a great run over of what the Oceanwise and MSC standards are, and what the labels that we see everyday on our seafood actually mean!

Our Standards

Slave Labour in the Shrimp Industry: One of the most shocking things I learned in this course, is that the working conditions inside Thailand’s shrimp industry is shockingly bad. And the human rights – even worse. Slave labour and human trafficking is a problem with this industry. The article below details it very well

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jan/23/thai-seafood-industry-report-trafficking-rights-abuses

Indigenous Ally Toolkit: Dr. Andrea Reid suggested this toolkit as a way to approach indigenous issues as a non-indigenous ally.

http://reseaumtlnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Ally_March.pdf

 

Some of my favourite tweets!

I got a Twitter account for the first time with this class.. and I must say, I’m SO glad I got it. What a great way to interact with the science community. Below are some of my favourite tweets of mine:

My haiku

An interesting fact

My most retweeted!

One from our Steveston fieldtrip

An aha! moment for me in Dr. Sumalia’s lecture

Policy Briefing – Lawn chemical usage

For this policy brief, I was inspired by Sheila from the Tampa Bay Estuary Program. She mentioned that lawn chemicals are a huge source of pollution for the Tampa Bay Estuary, even more so than agriculture. Having green lawns is important to Americans, but lawn chemicals can also be detrimental to the surrounding waters.

I tried to make my policy brief eye catching and have a clear, simple message.

Indigenous people/issues in marine conservation reflection

Topics that stood out to me

In the two-eyed seeing paper that we read this week and then discussed with Dr. Andrea Reid, the phrase “Incorporation is a euphemism for assimilation” really stood out to me. I’ve used this term myself with regards to indigenous knowledge, so it made me sit back and think about the words that I was using – yes they may have the right idea but were my words a representation of the bias that I hold? Recently in a lab meeting I suggested that incorporating indigenous perspectives into our work could be beneficial – and now I understand exactly what this paper is saying. I was trying to sprinkle dashes of indigeneity into “western” science instead of treating it as its own entity that has equal value.

I attended a seminar recently with Dr. Deborah McGregor, an environmentalist who works specifically with indigenous issues. She spoke in length about the difference between knowledge and knowledge systems, which I think is very applicable to recent conversations we’ve had. Indigenous knowledge are facts such as where to find ‘nuts and berries’, and how and when to fish etc. However, this indigenous knowledge isn’t separate from the community – it is embedded within their systems and the community functioning. Indigenous knowledge systems are supported by governance, laws, education, and other frameworks, and are essentially the foundation of the community. She also talked about how Indigenous people, like herself, fear that people care more about their knowledge than they do about indigenous peoples. Thus, this creates a tension between sharing their knowledge and the drive to protect themselves from getting used for their knowledge. So even thought they often want to share, they also need to protect their knowledge from exploitation.

For me this brings up an important point, WHY do we want to gain insight from indigenous communities? If it is for personal benefit– this can create further trauma to an already bruised relationship. It’s important to consider not just the knowledge, but the communities behind the wisdom and make sure that we are supporting them for the gifts that they give.

Another highlight from the session with Dr. Reid was the story that she told about the crow/hunter. I really enjoyed the strong message of this story, and how it was conveyed in such an accessible way. I think this also touches on the topic of indigenous styles of learning that we discussed with Dr. Reid. I learned that indigenous ways of teaching are often more holistic and personalized than the (often rigorous and standardized) practices that are usually used. This is a really important sentiment because it made me realize that people (and myself included) value western education/ways of knowledge as the gold standard, when in reality there are most definitely shortcomings. Valuing and listening to indigenous perspectives is not only important to the indigenous students who are educated here, but also is beneficial to all students regardless of their background.

Personal Musings

Something that resonated with me strongly was the idea of blood quantum and identity. In the TedX Talk, Rebecca Thomas talked her own struggles with identity, because her mom is non-native, but her dad is indigenous. She made it clear that indigeneity is not a matter of blood quantum, but also lived experiences, family relations and history. I relate to this because I am half- Punjabi and half-Caucasian. Because of the way I look, I get to move through the world with white privilege, I look ‘white’, speak English fluently and have no accent. However, I feel Indian, as my grandma makes curry, we celebrate Diwali and I have a multitude of Punjabi suits stored under my bed for extravagant Indian weddings. I’ve had people argue with me over my background, claiming that there is ‘no way’ that I could be Punjabi since I don’t look it and don’t speak the language. In a way, the talk that Thomas gave was strangely reassuring, because she was able to claim her identity as a white-passing person who doesn’t speak the language of her ancestors.

Future directions

Sometimes I feel as if approaching these topics can be challenging, and I’m worried that I’m not using the right terms or if the way in which I ask a question may come off as insensitive. I find myself adding a land acknowledgement at the beginning of presentations but questioning whether this may come off as ritualistic or tokenizing. At the end of the session Dr. Reid mentioned an “ally tool kit” which I am interested in reviewing and using in the future interactions. Additionally, I want to explore how indigenous perspectives are being honoured and used in the science that is going on at UBC, especially in the zoology department (which I take most of my classes in). Dr. Reid talked about the new Center for Indigenous Fisheries at UBC which I think is a great step. I also would like to explore further into how I can be touching on these topics in the research that I am doing currently, even though it is focusing on biochemical mechanisms. One strand that I can already think of is the that I do my work on mussels, and mussels have been cultivated and used my indigenous peoples on the BC coast for thousands of years.

One other thing that I would like to understand better are treaty rights. This was something that we discussed during the lecture on moderate livelihoods in the Canadian lobster fisheries with Dr. Megan Bailey. She talked about how a lot of the fishermen she talked with said “I respect the First Nations’ treaty rights but only if they exercise them during the commercial season”. She laughed and said, “The treaty right is that they CAN fish anytime they want to!”. This is something that I want to put more research into as it is evident that not understanding the rights of Indigenous people can lead to misinformed judgements. And additionally, we talked about how there are more treaties on the East Coast, compared to here on the West Coast. Because of this, I would also like to look into how indigenous people here interact with governments to assert their rights that may have not been formally laid out in a document.