The Canuck Chronicles Day 1

Best. First Day. Ever.

Woke up on a tiny island in British Columbia, Canada, this morning with the sun and a cool ocean breeze in my face and a hammock calling my name. It doesn’t sound like it, but this is all part of the job this summer. I’m interning for a professor and conducting research on river otter behavior in Ahousaht, B.C. I think I have to go ahead and say that I will probably deserve everything I get while I’m out here, good and bad, because I’ve harassed my professor to give me this research since I learned about it during May of last year.

Day one on the island was probably as action-packed as one could imagine, and it was more exciting than I ever expected. We rolled out of bed at a comfortable nine am after arriving at the island late last night, and we took our time making breakfast. We took the dime tour of our little neck of the (literally) woods from Tyler. Tyler’s a 25 yr-old smart-mouth employee of the University of Victoria Whale Research Lab, which is specifically where I’m located. After unloading the pounds and pounds of gear off our ferry last night, I first shook hands with the man after he helped our group move a multiple-hundred-pound crate off the ferry and onto the dock, and the first thing he said to me was, “Hi, I’m Tyler. Boy you all pack light, eh?” Needless to say I liked him immediately.

Back to the day. After finishing up the tour, the other two researchers with me from Redlands, Laura and Chandler who are both doing separate Grey Whale projects, and I changed into soak-able clothing and met up with another member of our jolly gang of staff, Crystal. Crystal will be my second-in command for my river-otter project, and she’s also our unofficial kayaking instructor. Our job for the morning was to learn how to successfully exit a kayak with a skirt on (kayak skirt) after the kayak has successfully capsized. We were in two-man kayaks and Crystal told us before we hit the water that our kayaks were very stable and difficult to roll. Well as anyone who knows me can guess, I took that as a challenge and managed to turn that sucker with one pull. I’ve never worn a kayak skirt before nor have I ever exited a capsized kayak, but I can confidently say from experience that it is easier than it sounds. It was a load of fun, a great way to wake up and start the day. But that wasn’t all. On our way back we were stopped by Tyler and asked to grab a 20 foot floating log and drag it across the beach, under two gangways and a pier and safely tie it to a floating wharf on the other side. Pulling your leg, you might ask? That’s exactly what I thought, but nay, he was plenty serious. So Crystal and I lashed that log to the end of the kayak and (tugboat-style) huffed and puffed and pulled that log under two gangways and a pier to the other side. To that event that I can confidently say from experience that it is not easier than it sounds. A twenty-foot long tree trunk floating in the water is still a twenty-foot long tree trunk, and it was heavy as hell to drag through the water in a kayak no less. I got my work out in for the day, but did we take a break there? Don’t count on it.

Breath, aaand….After we parked the kayaks and drained them, we walked back to the house to start lunch, but (again thanks to Tyler) had to postpone that lovely 2nd meal of the day so we could help him move another floating wharf across the beach between the dock and beach to another spot. Again, not easier than it sounds, but with two ropes attached to the far ends of the wharf, the tide coming in, and all seven of the staff working on it, we managed it fairly quickly and were able to get right back to lunch.

After lunch things slowed down. I worked on clearing the memory out of my video cameras while the others talked, read and slept. At three we congregated with Crystal again to have a go at locating one of the river otter latrine sites that she and the previous researcher had found last year. If you don’t know what a latrine site is, it’s exactly what it sounds like. Unfortunately we couldn’t get to it because the tide was in and the path to it was overgrown by some very friendly thimble-berry bushes. Thimble-berry bushes are a lot like raspberry bushes except with more and bigger thorns for petting us with. We cut the hike short and decided to try again tomorrow morning. We headed back to the house and spent the rest of the afternoon working on our respective projects. Crystal and I tested cameras, memory cards, and discussed logistics. It’s all the boring stuff so I’ll leave the details out.

After all the work that Tyler put us through on our first day, he came through for us at the end of it by cooking up a huge spaghetti dinner, and it was exactly what we needed.

Today was more than anything a day for living in the moment. While I stood on the dock coiling rope as we moved a floating wharf down the beach, I was happily awe-struck by the situation I successfully managed to get myself into. But I didn’t have much time to ponder my good fortune because we had to keep that floating pile of logs and nails from ramming into boats, rocks or metal gangways. I can only wait and see what six more weeks of this has in store for me.