Seattle Steam Plant Mural - Orca

Left: Seattle Steam Plant South Wall; Right: Seattle Steam Plant East Wall

Location: 1319 Western Avenue (47.60683,-122.339883)
Creator: James Crespinel (also created Mural – Martin Luther King Jr.)
Description: The plaque reads:

“The Western Avenue Wall Mural was created by artist James Crespinel and dedicated to the memory of his brother, William Donald Crespinel. The mural is sponsored by: the Seattle Waterfront Neighborhood Business Improvement Area and its Western Avenue Sub-committee; the City of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods; Seattle Steam; Harbor Properties; Immunex; Quadrant Management Services and Republic Parking. A special thanks to Kelly Balcomb-Bartok and David Ellifrit.

The mural on the south wall features an image of an actual orca whale named Merlin, indigenous to the southern resident pods of the San Juan Islands. The east mural is compsed of three panels with jumping Pacific white side dolphins and underwater marine life under the image of Mount Baker.”

Missing from this post, is the mural facing Elliot Bay, the west side of the building.

Seattle Steam is a privately-owned company that provides steam to buildings in Seattle’s Central Business District and First Hill neighborhoods. The murals are on the Western Plant, one of two plants Seattle Steam operates.

Left: Seattle Steam Plant Information About Mural; Right: South Wall

The Spider Dance and the Spiderlings

October 2013: A male Araneus diadematus does the mating dance with a female.

We’ve talked about Araneus diadematus (European Garden Spider or Cross Orb-Weaver spider) before in Garden Orb Weaver Spider and One Plump Spider. Well it’s spring here in Seattle and it seems the little cluster balls of baby Cross Orb-Weavers are everywhere. I suspect these babies - recently hatched - come from an egg sac that was created in the autumn and has over-wintered for several months. Mom is long gone, and so is dad, possibly eaten by mom. However, these kids have no time for counseling to get over a traumatic family situation because they probably have less than a year to survive and need to hop to it. And indeed, a day after the spider ball picture here broke up, the little baby spiders set up shop (aka webs) nearby.

 
October 2013: A male Araneus diadematus does the mating dance with a female.

May 2014: What comes after the mating dance: a ball of spiderlings. These spiderlings were found nearby to where the dance took place.

West Coast Resorts, The Lodge at Whale Channel for the Non-Fisherman FAQ

Left: Silhouette of Fishermen in Whale Channel; Center: A Rod Set on the Downrigger Waiting for a Bite; Right: Motoring Out to Alexander Island
 

This post is in the form of a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) intended for the non-fisherman going to West Coast Resorts, Whale Channel Lodge. This was my first experience salmon fishing and spending time in this part of British Columbia. Here are some obvious and not so obvious questions that I asked during my four day stay.  Fish on.

Where is this place?

The resort (at least this year) was in Barnard Harbour, an inlet of Princess Royal Island, which is included in the Kitimat-Stikine, BC, a regional district of Canada. The resort floats and is towed to different locations, seasonally. The resort is a converted barge that is positioned in a calm area and from what we heard runs completely from diesel. Water is desalinated for drinking water. Waste water is treated and released.

Left: Map Location of Barnard Harbour in British Columbia (Google Maps); Right: View of West Coast Resort Whale Channel in Barnard Harbour

How do I get there?

We left travelled from Vancouver airport to Bella Bella by turboprop jet and then on to Barnard Harbour by Helijet.

Left: Helijet on Floating Landing Pad in Barnard Harbour; Right: Layers of Princess Royal Island

Do I have to know anything about fishing?

Nope. A little knowledge helps, but the guides will fill you in on everything you need to know. Spoiler alert: you use this device called a down rigger to weigh down your fishing line to a particular depth (37 / 47 feet are popular) and you drive around trolling for salmon. When you get a bite, keep your pole up, tension on, and reel the fish in. (Okay, it’s way more than that, but that’s my brief description.) And, since you typically have two lines trailing the boat you keep them at different depths so they stay out of each other’s way. So practical.

Left: Bait Ball of Herring at the Surface South End of Campania Island; Right: Motoring Back to the Lodge After a Day of Fishing

Where do I fish?

Each boat has a map with the “typical” fishing spots. Your guide will suggest a good location. And, throughout the day, boats keep in radio contact to share tips on where the fishing is good. We spent the most time around Alexander Island (at the south end of Campania Island) and Eclipse Point.

Left: Alexander Island and Campania Island from the Helijet; Right: Map of Whale Channel Fishing Spots

What kind of fish will I catch?

On each boat there is a “Know Your Salmon Species” card (the flip side of the fishing spots info) that you’ll find yourself consulting a lot. The four species listed on the card are chinook (aka king or spring or Tyee*), coho (silver), chum (dog), and pink (humpback). We caught almost exclusively chinook and coho. We often could not tell which species we had until we hauled it up on board and opened its mouth to look at the gums. It’s all about the gums and tails.

* greater than 30 lbs.

Left: Chinook and Coho in the Fish Hold with Tags Identifying Who the Fish Belongs To; Right: Know Your Salmon Species Information 

What other wildlife will I see besides fish?

Here are a few of the animals we saw: steller sea lions, eagles, rhinoceros auklets, pacific white-sided dolphin, and humpback whales. Your mileage may vary. Keep your eyes open.

Left: Stellar Sea Lions Near Ashdown Island; Right: Eagles Feasting on a Bait Ball Near Alexander Island

Left: Whale Blow in the Morning Near Alexander Island; Right: Whale Surfacing Near Alexander Island

How many salmon can I catch?

It’s complicated. See the BC Sport Fishing Guide. Here’s what I think I understand of the rules: we could catch up to two chinook a day and four coho a day, but only four total fish day. We could take up to 8 total salmon out of the country. Four chinook and four coho. The math still confuses me. And, if you are there for several days, it’s a bit of a guessing game as to what to keep and what to throw back. You don’t want to spend your fish allowance too quickly because you could catch the big one the last day!

What are those things attached to the salmon?

Lice. Yup, salmon have lice (Lepeophtheirus salmonis). They are easy to pick off and they shouldn’t be considered detrimental to the quality of the fish, unless I suppose there were a lot of them (lice that is). Anyhow, there only seemed to be a few attached to the fish we caught. And, they seem to be quite often attached near the anal area of the fish. I took one off and flipped it on it’s back and it waved its legs in the air, desperately grasping to attach to something.

Left: Salmon Louse on a Salmon; Right: Salmon Louse Detached from Its Host

How do I kill the fish if I decide to keep it?

You bonk it on the head with a fish bat, put it in the hold, and gill it – at least that’s what I was taught. Throw water on top of it every so often until you get back to dock.

How do I take my fish home?

Oh, the folks at West Coast Resorts do all the hard work. If you can get your fish into the hold and your boat back to dock, you’re golden. The staff will take care of the rest: fillet, pack, and freeze it. When we arrived in Vancouver airport, boxes of fish were waiting for us. Fish on ice, that’s nice.

Left: Salmon Freshly Filleted Back at the Dock in Whale Channel; Right: Arriving at Vancouver Airport and Picking Up Our Boxes of Fish

What should I bring/wear?

Bring outdoor clothes that you’re comfortable in and could wear to dinner. You won’t trash your clothes, because likely you’ll choose to wear the rubberized overalls and a big heavy jacket provided by the resort. I will suggest to bring a pair of gloves (or buy them in the small gift shop at the resort) if you have “delicate” hands like I do. If you want to buy them before coming, you can look for “angler gloves”. Also, a warm cap that covers your ears is nice if your head gets cold easily.

Bugs?  We weren’t bothered much by bugs on the water. They bothered us a little at the lodge if we hung around the fish processing area. However, we did not wear any bug repellant the four days we were there and we were just fine. A few in our group reported some bites from black flies. “Black flies” seems to the catchall term for something that bites, looks like a fly, and we don’t know the name of. A dead one is pictured below.

What are all the colors I see on the coastline at low tide?

Glad you asked, it’s called intertidal zonation. In the photos here you can see several zones. The black zone toward the top is the spray or backshore zone. It is exposed to salt spray and is characterized by the black encrusting lichens (Verrucaria). Just below the spray zone is the intertidal zone, flooded once or twice a day, and characterized by a light brown zone that becomes darker closer to the water. In total, there are five zones: backshore, spray, intertidal, subtidal fringe, and subtidal.

Left: Intertidal Zonation Colors at Alexander Island;  Right: View of South End of Campania Island

Left: Another View of Intertidal Zonation; Right: Different Coloration in Barnard Harbour, Iron Oxide?

Will I step foot on land during my time there?

No. I asked and got a blank stare. I thought a nice little passeggiata might be nice between fishing jaunts. Nope. Land is generally inaccessible and potentially dangerous. Sigh.

Left: An Abandoned Boat in Barnard Harbour; Right: Eagle in Flight and Layers of Princess Royal Island

Why does the land look lush in some spots and stark and swampy in others?

From the air, the islands look like a tonsure, with a ring of trees around the perimeters. And, in stands of tree, there is often what look like dead tree or at least, dead tops. Why? We’ll it took a little digging to find out.

First, the West Coast Whale Channel resort, which is located between Bella Bella and Prince Rupert on the North Coast, is part of the Coastal Western Hemlock (CWH) Biogeoclimatic Zone. In the brochure on the gov.bc.ca site for CWH, this description of Wetlands caught my interest:

Not all of the Coastal Western Hemlock Zone is forested and not all of the forest is characterized by big trees. Wetlands, particularly bogs, are common in coastal lowland areas. They range from “closed” bog forests with scrubby and irregular tree cover to “open” bogs with few trees.

Okay, now we are getting somewhere. When flying in and out (via Helijet from/to Bella Bella), we noticed many coastal islands (large and small) with wetlands (fresh water) and that around these areas, there were little to no trees. What trees there were in the wetlands, were stunted. The CWH is the rainiest biogeoclimatic zone in British Columbia, but doesn’t the rain drain away?

In random search forays, I found something on Dewdney Island. The Dewdney and Glide Islands Ecological Reserve is a research area is in the Estevan Group, just due west by two islands from Whale Channel. The reserve contains “extensive bog and fen ecosystems representative of outer islands along the north mainland coast.” Ah, now we are getting somewhere. Furthermore, in the detailed description of the reserve, there is this information:

Dewdney Island is characterized by an outer rim of forest and interior area of wetland, the latter making up 60 to 75% of the total land area. Extensive occurrence of fen, bog and scrub vegetation, which occurs on both flat and gently sloping surfaces, is attributable to the subdued topography, moist climate, and lack of surficial materials conducive to development of forest soils. Forests are restricted to steep, well drained slopes and to a fringe near the shoreline where sands and gravels overlie the bedrock and nutrient supplies are better.

Left: Map of Dewdney Islands in the Estvean Group (Google Maps) Showing Fringe of Trees; Right: View of Princess Royal Island Looking West from the Helijet

Bingo, our tonsure of trees. I guess “subdued topography” in this context means that water accumulates and leads to more acidic conditions typical of wetlands.

Continuing for a moment with Dewdney Island, I found Brief notes on a field trip to Dewdney Island (ER#25), June 1987 where the authors and a malamute husky visited the island for four days, sampling 28 lakes on the island as part of coastal stickleback populations research. This June 7^th entry stuck out for me:

Our faces and hands are now bloody from the blackflies and we have to wear netting over our heads and as well wear gloves to protect our hands. Where the net tucks into the collar, it presses against the skin and the blackflies are able to bite through the net and obtain their bit of flesh. With this density of flies, it is no wonder that the stickleback were as abundant as they were.

So, I guess stepping foot on land is not such a good idea?

So what’s left? The dead tops. In the gov.bc.ca brochure mentioned above, there was also this description of the Spiked-top Cedars:

In the wet conditions of the outer coast [where the resort is], old western red cedar and yellow-cedar trees often develop dead or “spiked” tops. Cedars require lots of calcium, especially for the proper development of their tops. Scientists think the dead tops of these trees are caused by calcium deficiencies in the moist, acidic soils of these areas.

And, finally, wind is controlling factor of tree height on the coast explaining why so many of the islands have a very uniform tree height at shoreline, when viewed from the water.

Left: Time to Go; Right: Last Glimpse of the Lodge

Curious Naturalists

The Curious Naturalist is a book by Niko Tinbergen (1907 - 1988) that was first published in 1958. The edition discussed here is a reprint of the revised 1973 text. The book covers the time period from the late 1920s to the 1950s during which Tinbergen became an eminent Dutch ethologist (one who studies animal behavior) and ornithologist (one who studies birds). Tinbergen was a co-winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. His prize speech of December 12, 1973 is interesting because in it, he credits observation - the central theme of Curious Naturalists and really of Tinbergen’s career - as a critical factor for winning the prize. The speech starts off talking about the “unconventional decision” to choose three men (Tinbergen, Konrad Lorenz, Karl von Frisch shared the prize) who were, in some sense, outside the field and whose work was that as “mere animal watchers”. He argues in the speech that observation can in fact bring a lot to bear in physiology (citing the then still relatively new ideas that became the Alexander Technique) and medicine (observations on autism). It’s not clear how the observations have held up in time.

So what is a naturalist? A naturalist conducts scientific research of plants and animals with observation being his main research tool. That doesn’t mean that the naturalist doesn’t experiment and test things, just that a strong emphasis is placed on observation. In fact in the book, the typical pattern of the research that Tinbergen presents starts with an observation period of an animal, followed by some rather simple, yet ingenious experiment or alteration to the animal’s environment, and further observation of the animal with the new environment. A typical example is the work he describes on the Beewolf, Philanthus triangulatum, in the first few chapters. At first, Philanthus is observed to understand the basics: each female Beewolf wasp has one burrow and returns with bees for the larvae inside. But how does Philanthus find its burrow entrance? Landmarks seem to be the key, so different aspects of Philanthus’s homing skills (finding their way back to their burrow) are tested by placing different objects (landmarks) around burrow entrances. The tests become more elaborate and the response of the insects is watched. In a few tests, all the natural landmarks near burrow entrances are move elsewhere to mislead the Beewolf and it works. Tinbergen writes “[a]t the end of such a series of tests I replaced the landmarks in their original position, and this finally enabled the wasp to return to her home. Thus the test always had a happy ending - for both of us. This was not pure altruism on my part - I could now use the wasp for another test if I wished.”

Some of the species discussed include:

- Beewolf wasp, Philanthus triangulatum, the spark that really got Tinbergen started.
- Sand wasp, Ammophila campestris
- Moths, Ennomos alniaria and Ennomos quercinaria
- Moths, Biston betularia betularia and the difference between morpha typica and carbonaria
- Grayling moth, Eumenis semele (Hipparchia semele)
- Black-headed Gull, Chroicocephalus ridibundus,
- (Black-legged) Kittiwake, Rissa brevirostris

It’s interesting to note that Tinbergen didn’t title the book Curious Naturalist, singular, and instead used the plural, Naturalists. I think it points to his desire that this book isn’t so much about him, singularly, but about us, plural, and that we could all benefit from being a curious naturalist. And upon reading this book, it would strike me as odd if you didn’t approach observation of your surroundings - be they an urban lot or deep-woods - a little differently and with a little more respect. But, I suppose if you pick up this book, you are already bent this way and Tinbergen just pushes you a bit more.

One fun aspects of the book are the many photos and illustrations. The photos aren’t glamourized, just naturalists poking around in the field. The illustrations often involve some form of abstracted field observation, observation setup, or results and are engaging to look at. Here is an example where two of Tinbergen’s students study the homing behavior of the sand wasp, Ammophila campestris, which climbs shrubs or small trees, takes a survey, and then jumps in the direction of her nest with prey (a caterpillar) in its grasp. The illustration below shows paths home for one wasp and that a strong learned “long” path.

 

Connections

I decided to read the Curious Naturalists after reading an excerpt of it in The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing (2008) edited by Richard Dawkins, who incidentally was a student of Tinbergen. While reading the Naturalists I kept thinking of a bike ride on the Waterland route from Amsterdam to Marken we took in 2004. I remember being struck by the beauty of the polders, waterways, farms, and wooden houses. The route is across Zuider Zee where, on the south end (in Hulshorst) Tinbergen studied Philanthus.

Another point of connection is that I started the Curious Naturalists before taking a trip on the Wainwright Coast to Coast Walk and finished it when I returned. Chapters 7 - 9 are set in Ravenglass, in Cumbria. Ravenglass is just a few kilometers south from St. Bees where we started our walk.

After I finished the book it struck me how much room for improvement I have for making good observations. I went on the Wainwright walk with the goal of identifying plants (one a day) and while I was able to do that (see western botanical guide and eastern botanical guide), there were many cases that I didn’t do basic things like count petals, examine leaves, make notes on the surroundings and, in general, just take the time to observe.

On a related note, while on the Wainwright walk I saw many rabbits that succumbed to myxomatosis. Tinbergen mentions the disease in Chapter 7 in regard to the vegetation of the dunes of Ravenglass which seemed to be recovering because of the reduced rabbit (“undiscriminating vegetarian”) population - killed by myxomatosis.

Mxyomatosis – or – The Explanation for Flattened Rabbits

It took a while for it to dawn on me and my tour mates that something was amiss with the number of rabbits we kept walking past, dead and deflated, like flattened pancakes. Finally, we asked and learned that the rabbits likely succumbed to mxyomatosis – a disease which affects rabbits and is caused by the Myxoma virus, a kind of pox virus. The virus was discovered over a hundred years ago in South America, used in Australia in the 1930s to control rabbit populations, and then unintentionally introduced to France in the 1950s where it eventually spread to the UK. The photo shown here was taken just west of Richmond, near Whitcliffe Wood. This was day 8, July 31 when we walked from Reeth to Richmond on the Wainwright Coast to Coast. The second photo was day 11, Aug 3 when we walked from Blakey Ridge to Grosmont. The dead rabbit was found up on Glaisdale Moor.

Red v. Grey Squirrel

 A Red Squirrel Road Sign in Ravenstonedale

As we headed into Ravenstonedale on day 6 of the Coast to Coast walk we saw a number of signs about the red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris). In a nutshell (!), the population of these mohawked-eared cuties has decreased because of the introduction of the eastern grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), an American cousin. The grey squirrel out-competes the red squirrel for a number of reasons including: 1) the grey squirrel can readily eat acorns and the red squirrel can’t and there are a lot of oak trees; 2) the grey squirrel carries a disease that is often fatal to red squirrels; and 3) the red squirrels don’t breed as much when under pressure. More information can be found at the Northern Red Squirrels Site that works to support the reds and the Save Our Squirrels site which has some great information sheets about the plight of the reds.

Telling the Difference Between the Red and Grey Squirrel [ref]

From a book I read, The Diversity of Life, I remember reading that species that have evolved to specialized environments are in general more vulnerable to extinction than less specialized species. The reference to “black spot” in one of the photos, I believe, means a place in the road that is dangerous for squirrels, i.e. they get run over. As for grey squirrels, it is legal to kill them in the UK.

While we are talking about Ravenstonedale and on to more pleasant subjects, I must say that I had a great stay at the Old Vicarage. Tea and cake at 5:30 when I arrived. Most of our group stayed at the Black Swan, also very nice, but, the vicarage was just right for me.

Tea and Cake at the Old Vicarage, Ravenstonedale

Day 4:  July 27 Rosthwaite to Glenridding; this sign spotted heading out of Grasmere


Day 5: July 28 Lake ullswater to Shap; this sign spotted near Bampton