Cypress Island and fledgling saw-whet owl

Sunrise from our campsite

We went for an overnight paddle last weekend in the San Juans. Cypress Island is actually quite close to Fildago Island (where Anacortes is located). But kayaking in the San Juans not a walk in the park. The currents are big and strong and the direction seems to be difficult to predict. We decided to learn slowly about kayaking in these waters. So we took a 5-minute ferry over to Guemes Island, drove to the north end, and paddled to Cypress from there. This meant we only had one big crossing instead of two. And wow - I was glad! The waves were big and confused in the channel we crossed, plus it was windy. Confused seas don't really let you point your kayak into the waves very easily. So sometimes I had my kayak where I wanted it and other times I didn't. We took some water over the bow - but the kayaks handled it wonderfully. I think both of us feel a lot more confident in the kayaks ability to do their job in bigger waters.

Julie and Cypress Head

Once we got across to Cypress Island we set up our tent in the most lovely campsite ever. We were at the top of a small cliff looking straight down into a kelp forest and across Bellingham Channel to Mt.Baker and Guemes Island. We could watch the gnarly currents as the tides changed and marvel at the strength of the tides! It was a great predictor of slack tide, so we could gauge when to leave the next day (in order to have the least amount of current to fight when paddling). After eating our lunch and snoozing in the sun, we decided to go for a hike. Cypress Island is loaded with hiking trails - what a cool island! And this is when the coolest part of our entire weekend occurred. Only about five minutes into the hike up Jay stopped short on the trail and whispered "owl" to me! Holy s**t! Only about 10-15 ft. away from us on a branch right over the trail was a tiny little owl about the size of a hand. The cute factor was way way off the scale. This little owl turned out to be a fledgling northern saw-whet owl. It had a fluffy orange belly (think of a color similar to a robin), a black head, and white eyebrows and mustache. It watched us and we watched it back, for about 10-15 minutes. It must have gotten bored because it took a dump and flew away. I spooked it out of a tree a few minutes later when we started walking again. I didn't even see it, tiny little thing.

Hello! I'm a very fluffy and cute fledgling northern saw-whet owl. I'll watch you if you watch me.

Our photos of the owl are crappy and out of focus, I miss my good camera. But a new SLR is on the way. I have finally graduated to big camera land. But I'll always love my Fujifilm camera that some jerk is using now. I couldn't help but think of the camera's great zoom when we were watching this tiny owl. What a treat!

Cone Islands

Jay finds some anemones at low tide (yes, all the green stuff is actually a big clone of anemones)

The next day we had a windy paddle back across the channel again, but this time the waves were not confused, so it made the conditions more predictable and a lot more fun (rather than scary). We stopped at one of the Cone Islands and watched harbor seals hauled out on the rocks. On the other side of the island were sheer cliffs with pigeon guillemots (neat birds) nesting above. The tide was low and we got a great view of a huge patch of anemones that were exposed! This made Jay happy!

Our big plans for this weekend include a Herbie Hancock concert and a hike around Mt.Baker. Can't wait. Washington sure is like living in a giant playground. If only family and friends were out here with us.... =)

Mt.Rainier National Park

We spent a three-day weekend in a beautiful place - Mt. Rainier National Park. Wow. It was a weekend of wildflowers, alpine vistas, and one big huge mountain dominating the scene. The weather was unreal, there wasn't a cloud in the sky! As a result, once we were up high we could see every volcano in WA except Mt. St. Helens (Mt. Baker, Glacier Peak, Mt. Rainier, Mt.Adams). The crappy part about the weekend - some schmuck stole my camera. These photos were all taken with our tiny point and shoot. But my good Fujifilm camera....gone. I left it out at our campsite, by mistake, and it was gone in the morning. Insert foul language here. That camera has been many places with me and I was quite attached. Plus, there were coins in there....those old Indian coins were given to us by a sweet Burmese man when we were in Myanmar. The schmuck (imagine worse language here) will never know how much those coins meant. I was planning on getting a new camera before heading to Antarctica and on upgrading to an SLR finally. But I was not ready to give that camera up, it was perfect for hiking with and, well, I just liked it. If you look at my photos, you can see how I felt about this loss in some photos.

But, with a gorgeous mountain and a rainbow of wildflowers all around, it was hard to stay sad. Mountains are also good for the soul.... and this was a lovely weekend despite the big downer.

The Cascades (not a bad place to live eh?)

I bet you might think this is Mt.Rainier - but it is not! This is another volcano in WA, Mt. Adams.

Clark's nutcracker

Avalanche lily

Magenta paintbrush matches Julie's shirt

Pink mountain heather and many other wildflowers in the background

Clamming!

You wouldn't know it was July would you? Here I am blinding the beach in my sexy foul weather gear.

Perhaps some of you are interested in what I do at my new job! I do a ton of different things, but here is the latest project. One of the goals of my job is to enhance clam populations along a beach on the reservation. Why? Well, some tribal members cannot afford a boat to go out and fish, but it is free to go walk to the beach and dig up some clams. Although it is not clear to me yet, we will be shooting for either a year-round subsistence harvest or a year-round commercial harvest. Hopefully the enhanced beach will provide these people with a free source of healthy food and/or a modest income.

Washington is an odd state. It is the only state (that I know of) where tidelands are bought and sold just like private land. So you can’t just walk down any old beach and dig. The reservation owns its tidelands and I have been working on one beach in particular called Lone Tree Point. The view from Lone Tree Point is an ugly tree with bald eagle chillin’ on top (usually) and a crappy view of islands, mountains, and almost Deception Pass National Park. Note the sarcasm. It is gorgeous!

Adding clam seed (i.e. baby clams) to the beach is nothing new to Washingtonians. Many of the private beaches are owned by shellfish growing companies. In fact, Taylor Shellfish is the largest shellfish grower in the USA (I think) and most of their operation is based in WA. To make my life even more easy, WA Sea Grant has a little publication with directions on how to enhancement clam populations on a beach. So, I just read that carefully and set to work!


First thing first! My boss, Jim, and I surveyed the beach. We had to know what clams were there before we added more. Next, I used GIS (mapping software) to map out the tide lines (a rough estimate of elevation) and figure out where to put some test plots. I didn’t want to go too crazy and seed the entire beach yet. So this year I planned an experiment that tests seeding densities and the effectiveness of predator nets (to exclude crabs and ducks from eating the little dudes). We have plots with no netting (our control), plots with netting that receive no seed, and plots that get the little clams at one of two different seeding densities. The plots that have netting but no seed are a neat idea of mine (if I say so myself). What if the beaches receive natural recruitment (i.e. little baby clams naturally settle there) but those recruits are eaten up by predators? Well, by adding netting and not adding clam seed, I can find out if there is natural recruitment to the area. It would be awesome if we didn’t have to spend money on buying baby clams from a hatchery. Did that make sense?

Here is Jim hauling out some of the predator netting

Nets ready to be unrolled

You can see two nets here

Liza checking out some of the little clams

Here is a link to all the photos - http://picasaweb.google.com/globalscents/2010WorkPhotos#

Ray and Pete spreading the little clams out - look carefully and you can watch them flying from Ray's hand...

And finally, on a somber note…. I went to a workshop on ocean acidification for tribal fisheries managers today. I bet most of you know what ocean acidification is – but the long story short is that the ocean naturally absorbs CO2. As humans continue to add absurd amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, the ocean soaks more CO2 up. Through the bad luck of a chemical reaction, this makes the oceans more acidic. Thus, the more CO2 we put up, the more acidic the oceans become. Since many humans and governments (ours) are showing no desire to change (or any concern for future generations), it seems that acidic oceans will be the wave of the future. I knew ocean acidification was a huge problem, but in this workshop I learned that Puget Sound will, unfortunately, be the canary in the coal mine when it comes to seeing how more acidic oceans affect our marine life. In the spring and summer months a lot of upwelling occurs off the west coast. More acidic waters are typically found deeper in the ocean, but upwelling brings that deeper and more acidic water right up to the surface along WA, OR, and CA. That water manages to get all the way into Puget Sound. This past year, water was already so acidic that the hatcheries that raise little clams had a big problem. The 3-day old clams were literally dissolving in the acidic water and dying. I was shocked. I expected this to happen in 10 years or so – but it is already happening here in WA. So, the hatcheries managed to get some money from the feds to try and save their businesses (I believe about 3000 people would be affected if shellfish operations kicked it). Now they have these crazy systems that determine where the least acidic water is in the bays. They pump that specific water into their tanks so the little clam shells don’t dissolve. Unbelievable. So, are feeling like you need to get that smaller car with better mileage yet? Wow.

Octopus

Jay and I went on a dive last weekend.....I wasn't expecting to see much, until I spotted an octopus! We spent the entire dive with this awesome critter. The octopus must have been hungry because it didn't mind two big-eyed humans following it around while it searched for good stuff to eat. I think we spent almost 40 minutes watching this one animal. What a treat!