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Today was a good day. Tough work in strong currents but definitely a day where we left the ocean better than we found it. #cleanupdive #diveagainstdebris #padiaware #cleaniscool #diversareawesome

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First Van Island Dive 🤙 coming up @divevictoriabc

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Dive 110- Last minute dive with @beseaadventures at Iron Mine Bay. Easily one of the worst hikes to the water, but it’s always worth it. Giant schools of fish, huge cliff wall full of colourful sea life and to top it off, found a pretty good sized octopus in the shallows. Spent a good 10 minutes hanging with it, and getting hugs back. Top tier dive 🤘

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Tucked into a crevice on the reef, this wolf eel doesn't look like a wolf eel yet. Bright orange, spotted, slender — young wolf eels look almost nothing like the fish they're named after. Easy to mistake for something else entirely.

They aren't even true eels. Wolf eels are a type of wolffish, built to wedge into cracks and holes in the reef and stay there.

But give it time.

As they mature, the colour fades. The body thickens. The face turns heavy and blunt. Full grown, they're mottled grey giants up to two and a half metres long, looking like they've guarded the same crevice for a hundred years. Some have — holding one den for decades, paired with the same mate for life.

Wolf eels — one more reason to support the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area (MPA) Network.

Video credit: @beseaadventures
Created by: Ryan Swan
#DefendOurCoast #StrongCoast #BCWaters #WolfEel #GreatBearSea

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Lingcod don’t pick their spawning sites at random. The specific structure a male guards through winter, the crack in the reef, the ledge with current hitting it, is chosen because of the oxygen that water movement delivers to the egg mass inside it.

Research published in Environmental Biology of Fishes measured oxygen levels inside lingcod egg masses at low-current and high-current spawning sites. At low-current sites, oxygen inside the mass averaged 16 percent air saturation during tidal flow. At that level, half the embryos are dead within 73 hours. Mortality at low-current sites reached 95 percent. Embryos in the center of the same mass developed more slowly and hatched smaller than embryos on the outside, the ones getting oxygen.

At high-current sites, even during slack water, oxygen averaged 69 percent air saturation. The threshold that keeps embryos alive is a current velocity of roughly 10 to 15 centimeters per second across the nest. Where currents are strong, males nest deeper. Where currents are weak, they nest shallower, using wave action to do what tidal flow can’t. The fish is solving an oxygen delivery problem and its nest location is the solution.

A 2022 Monterey Bay study exposed lingcod eggs to projected 2050 ocean conditions and cut successful hatch in half. Under 2100 projections, viable hatch dropped to 3 percent.

The reef structure holding lingcod in winter is the same structure the species needs to reproduce. The fish are there because of the water moving over it.

#Lingcod #CaliforniaFishing #FishScience #ReefFishing #MarineBiology

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It looks like it's flying.

Not through the sky, but just above the seafloor.

This is the spotted ratfish — a strange, ancient fish whose ancestors were already swimming the oceans roughly 400 million years ago. That's before dinosaurs!

With its pointed snout, ghostly white spots, broad wing-like fins, and long trailing tail, it looks like something from another world.

But it's right here on our coast.

Spotted ratfish spend their lives cruising the depths, searching for crabs, shrimp, worms, and other small creatures hidden in the mud and gravel below. A venomous spine helps protect them from predators.

Yet even in waters hundreds of metres deep, they aren't beyond the reach of industrial fishing. Bottom trawling can sweep up spotted ratfish as bycatch while dragging heavy gear across the seafloor. In fact, ratfish are one of the most common victims of bottom trawling bycatch.

The Great Bear Sea isn't just home to the species we see every day. It's also home to remarkable creatures like this one — part of a complex marine food web that supports our fisheries, our coastal communities, and the abundance we depend on.

The good news is that the Central Coast Marine Conservation Area (MCA) and the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area (MPA) Network both don't allow bottom trawling in their protected areas.

Spotted ratfish - one more reason to support the Central Coast MCA and the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area MPA Network.

Video by @beseaadventures

#DefendOurCoast #StrongCoast #RatfishOfBC #GreatBearSea

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Black bears working the shoreline.Coastal sea wolves pacing the tide line.Salt spray blowing across the deck of Good Vibrations while one young guy stood there completely locked into the moment.

This is the kind of day Northern Vancouver Island delivers when you spend enough time out on the water.

Wild coast.Big tides.Predators on the beach.The soundtrack from The Offspring hitting at exactly the right time.

Port Hardy just has a different feel to it.

@VisitPortHardy@vancouverislandnorth@vancouverisland.travel@tourismvancouverisland@supernaturalbc@quarterdeckinn@porthardyrvresort@hotelporthardy@porthardydiving

#PortHardy#PortHardyDiving#CoastalSeaWolf#BlackBear#GoodVibrationsGodsPocketMarineParkVancouverIslandExploreBCWestCoastCanadaWildlifePhotographyOceanAdventureDiveBCexperiencecomoxvalley

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Cruising through a young bull kelp forest above a snowy mountain of plumose anemones, with light piercing through the water, fish hanging motionless in the gentle current, and everything somehow feeling calm and alive at the same time. One of my favourite dives at God’s Pocket.

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You don’t see it from the surface, but it’s there.

Under a busy pier where people have been crabbing for generations, the seafloor has slowly filled with traps and lines that never made it back up.

Even when the bait is gone and the line is slack, that gear can still catch and tangle whatever moves through it – not just crabs, but everything from schooling fish to diving seabirds to marine mammals.

Crabbing is part of life on this coast, and people take pride in doing it right. Crabbing feeds families, brings people together, and is a tradition passed down from generation to generation.

But gear that is lost should be reported or recovered. Because if it isn’t, it does not disappear. It becomes ghost gear. And over time, that changes the water below, affecting the same places people rely on to fish, crab, and spend time with their families.

Reporting lost gear is a small step that keeps the coast working the way it’s meant to.

#DefendOurCoast #BCFisheries #Crabbing #GhostGear #MarineLife #VancouverIsland #fishing

Video credit: Be Sea Adventures on YouTube

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A coastline can unravel quietly, not with a bang, but with a slow disappearance.

Kelp forests along BC’s coast feed the marine food web, shelter young fish, and support coastal livelihoods. But when sunflower sea stars, one of the main predators of sea urchins, collapsed from disease, there was nothing to stop them from stripping the kelp forests bare.

Scientists have identified a naturally occurring marine bacterium as responsible for sea star wasting disease, and warmer ocean temperatures as fueling its spread. While large-scale prevention in the wild remains a challenge, protecting the cold‑water refuge populations on BC’s north coast - where sunflower sea stars have survived - is essential for the species’ long‑term survival.

Why is it so important to protect the sea stars?

When they die, the result is a surge in urchins. In some areas, populations of urchins have multiplied and begun stripping kelp down to bare rock, creating “urchin barrens” where almost nothing else survives.

In extreme cases along the West Coast, kelp losses have reached up to 90%. In BC, declines vary by region, but the pressure is real and growing.

Kelp isn’t just scenery. It’s the foundation of the food chain.

The Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area (MPA) Network helps hold that line. Banning bottom trawling in protected areas keeps the reefs, sea stars, and the seafloor intact, giving kelp forests a chance.

Video credit: @beseaadventures

#DefendOurCoast #GreatBearSea #KelpForests #OceanFoodWeb #ProtectOurFisheries #BCcoast #MarineProtection

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When it starts feeding, it looks like something out of a sci-fi movie.

During the day, the basket star stays curled up, wrapped around coral or sponge. Then the current picks up, night rolls in, and it opens wide into this branching net, pulling food straight out of the water.

It doesn’t roam. It relies on what’s already there. Solid structure, steady flow, something to grip with those tiny hooks while the current does the work.

Take that structure away, and it can’t do much. No place to hold on. No way to feed properly.

That’s what gets lost when bottom trawlers drag their nets across the seafloor. It’s not just what’s caught. It’s everything that gets flattened – the places where animals like this actually need to live.

Bottom trawling will be banned in the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area (MPA) network. It means species like this can keep dancing in the current, doing what they were born to do, night after night.

Basket stars - one more reason to establish the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area (MPA) Network.

#GreatBearSea #MPAsWork #BottomTrawling #MarineFoodWeb #PacificCoast #StrongCoast #DefendOurCoast

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