On the surface, the water looks like glass, reflecting the fluffy clouds that roll above the cedar inlets of Bella Bella, on B.C.’s Central Coast. But looks can be deceiving.

In this part of the Great Bear Rainforest, carnage lingers under the sea: in 2016, the tugboat Nathan E. Stewart ran aground on Edge Reef, spilling more than 100,000 litres of diesel fuel into the Heiltsuk Nation’s waters. Powerful winds pushed the fuel across Seaforth Channel and into Gale Pass, a critical marine harvesting site. The event is something the nation’s members, many of whom served as first responders on the spill, are still struggling with, both emotionally and economically.

Nearly two years later, many marine species in these waters remain contaminated. The Heiltsuk’s manila clam fishery, which provided up to $200,000 of annual income for the remote community, has been unable to reopen. In response, the Heiltsuk and other First Nations who have borne witness to increasing marine traffic, have lobbied the federal government to give them a more proactive role, and the resources needed, in defending and managing their coastal territories.

Last week, while the world marked National Indigenous Peoples Day, the First Nations came one step closer to realizing their goals.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined First Nations leaders at the Prince Rupert Coast Guard Base to announce a partnership with 14 B.C. North Coast First Nations that will promote reconciliation alongside environmental management.

The accord, named the “Reconciliation Framework Agreement for Bioregional Oceans Management and Protection,” is the first of its kind to link the federal government’s mandate of reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples to the objective of environmental protection.

The agreement will help protect Canada’s Northern Shelf bioregion, which includes the north and central coast of B.C., Haida Gwaii and northern Vancouver island, and will create a landscape of shared authority that recognizes the importance of Indigenous knowledge-based management.

“First Nations have a well thought out understanding of what the needs of this coast are, and through our millennia-old relationship with our territory and our intimate knowledge of our waterways, we are best suited to determine what is needed to protect our waters,” Heiltsuk Chief Councillor Marilyn Slett told The Narwhal.

A humpback whale surfaces in the Great Bear Rainforest. Photo: Gloria Dickie.

Though the exact details of the agreement have yet to be released, it’s intended that it will build off the government’s promised $1.5 billion investment into a national Oceans Protection Plan. That plan strives to improve marine safety and responsible shipping, as well as protect the marine environment — although it’s been met with considerable cynicism in B.C. where Trudeau has pushed for a seven-fold increase in oil tanker traffic through Vancouver Harbour, as part of the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline.

“When we announced the Plan, we envisioned Indigenous people as guides in managing Canada’s oceans,” Trudeau said at last week’s press conference. Together, he says, First Nations and the federal government will coordinate efforts on marine spatial planning along two-thirds of the B.C. coast and develop a network of Marine Protected Areas, as well as improve waterway management and boost the response capacity of First Nations.

The latter portion could come in the form of funding the Heiltsuk’s $111.5 million proposal for an Indigenous Marine Response Centre in their territory, to respond to disasters like the Nathan E. Stewart. Had the community been equipped with an oil spill response facility and fleet, the nation feels things would have turned out differently. In the months that followed, the Heiltsuk were highly critical of the federal government’s slow response to the spill, scoffing at Canada’s branding of a “world-leading” response.

But Chief Slett seemed cautiously optimistic at Thursday’s gathering that the Centre would come to fruition.

“[It’s a] major investment, but it’s required if we’re going to live up to the agreement that we signed and that we’re celebrating here today around truly protecting the ocean,” Slett said.

Though the government has made no final decision on the Heiltsuk proposal, a spokesperson said they will be delivering training in spill response and search and rescue, as well as collaborating with Indigenous peoples to develop an information system that provides real-time information on vessel traffic and marine conditions.

It’s likely the central and north coast of British Columbia will serve as a testing ground for how reconciliation can play out on the ground, with hopes that this model can then be replicated in other parts of Canada.

Increasingly, the government has been investing in Indigenous environmental stewardship, with $25 million allocated in last year’s budget for an Indigenous Guardians Program, which assists band members in becoming stewards of their ancestral lands and waters. Coastal First Nations have such a network of Coastal Guardian Watchmen who patrol their territories for illegal activity and facilitate environmental monitoring projects and conservation work.

Coastal Guardian Watchmen patrol their territories. Photo: Gloria Dickie.

A government spokesperson said that in the near term, Canada intends to initiate collaborative processes around the Bay of Fundy/Scotian Shelf, the Newfoundland/Labrador Shelves, the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Salish Sea. The latter will undoubtedly become a war of wills, given the federal government’s intention to expand the Trans Mountain pipeline, thereby increasing the volume of oilsands bitumen shipped through the Salish Sea.

“Our elders tell us, if we take care of the ocean, the ocean will take care of us,” Slett said. “This value will ensure our cultural survival.”

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Sea otters score top marks on the cute and cuddly scale as they float around kelp beds holding hands or hugging fuzzy pups, but when they show up on the marine doorstep, it is like having a pack of badly behaved German shepherds taking over the neighborhood.

“They weigh about 80 pounds, they eat 4,000 calories a day and they just tear through the environment,” said Eric Peterson, co-founder of the Tula Foundation, which funds research at the Hakai Institute, a field science station on Calvert Island on the Central Coast.

Sea otters and the effect they have on the environment became one of the institute’s research projects almost by accident after about 150 of them showed up near Calvert Island two years ago.

“The results have been quite amazing and dramatic,” Peterson said.

Research has centred around the effect sea otters have on sea urchin populations and kelp beds.

Sea otters were almost eliminated from many areas of the B.C. coast during the 18th and 19th century fur trade, but their populations are now recovering — to the point that their status has gone from endangered to a species of special concern.

But they compete with humans for prey species such as sea urchins, abalone, clams and crabs and they change the marine landscape, which brings its own special set of problems.

It is estimated that there are now about 1,000 sea otters on the Central Coast and possibly about 4,000 off the west coast of Vancouver Island where government biologists released 89 otters more than 40 years ago.

Populations have not yet re-established themselves in areas such as Haida Gwaii and the Strait of Georgia.

“Sea otters are a top predator. They are kind of like humans and one of the things they eat is sea urchins,” said applied marine ecologist Anne Salomon, assistant professor at Simon Fraser University, who has led some of the sea otter research.

The otters’ diet of sea urchins then affects the kelp beds, Salomon said in an interview after making a presentation at the Hakai Research Exchange in Sidney last week.

“The sea urchins are herbivores and they graze like elephants or giraffes, they are sort of lawn mowers.”

So, when sea otters eat the sea urchins, kelp beds, without urchins to keep them under control, turn into kelp forests.

That has some benefits as the kelp forests are carbon sinks and provide good habitat for fish, but shellfish harvesters prefer a marine environment with clams and abalone.

“Lots of humans have become very used to a coast without sea otters,” Salomon said.

The recovery of sea otters, which started in 1911 after they were protected through one of the first international conservation treaties, has been an incredible conservation success story, Salomon said.

“But it’s also really problematic.”

Until colonial rule, sea otter populations were kept somewhat in check because the otters were hunted by First Nations, but now there is little to control their population growth.

“People see them as a threat to abalone and that is eliciting major conflicts on the coast,” said Salomon, adding that her research shows that abalone and otters can co-exist as the abalone adapt and learn to hide in crevices.

But then there is the question of the otters’ behaviour.

“They do have a lot of sex,” Salomon said.

And it is often rough sex, with the male grabbing the female by the nose and holding her underwater.

“They’re not particularly nice to each other or to other animals,” said Josh Silberg, a master’s graduate student in Salomon’s laboratory.

“They are intelligent and charismatic and they may look cute and cuddly, but they are really a big weasel,” he said.

Image Credit: Marcio Cabral de Moura via Flickr.

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A former luxury fishing lodge on a remote island off B.C.’s Central Coast has been transformed into a cutting-edge research centre, producing some of the province’s most innovative science.

From early April until mid-October each year the off-the-grid Hakai Institute field station on Calvert Island houses renowned scientists, university professors, graduate students and post-doctoral students researching all aspects of the B.C. coast, from grizzly bears and sea otters to sand formations, archaeology and microbes.

The breadth of the research was show-cased Friday when more than 200 scientists and First Nations researchers gathered in Sidney for the Hakai Research Exchange.

And, sitting at the back of the room, listening intently to the presentations, were the two people who have made the field research station a reality.

The Hakai Institute and, now, a new field station on Quadra Island, are funded and run by Eric Peterson and Christina Munck, co-founders of the Tula Foundation.

The concept was born out of a love for the B.C. coast, combined with a realization that — despite a lot of talk about areas such as the Great Bear Rainforest — almost no coastal science was being conducted at the community level, Peterson said.

That science gap convinced the couple to put their money into the project after they sold their successful information technology company.

“I talked to university scientists and they would say it was so difficult to do work up there because there were no facilities,” Peterson said in an interview.

“The Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Ministry of Environment and all the government services were stepping backwards. The paradox was that, with all the talk about how wonderful our coast is, at the community level and First Nations level, there was no work on the ground.”

Peterson decided to combine his entrepreneurial skills with Munck’s background in conservation and botany to create a venue where up-and-coming scientific talent could be mentored.

The Tula Foundation purchased the fishing lodge in 2009 and then the work of turning it into a field station started in earnest.

“We had to rebuild the power grid and the water system and the sewage system and the docks and then in 2012 we started doing science in a significant way and since then the enthusiasm has been almost frightening,” Peterson said.

“The growth has been greater than I would have expected. I think it indicates there’s such a pent-up demand for long-term ecological research.”

Chris Darimont, Hakai-Raincoast geography professor at the University of Victoria, has seen the benefits first hand as he conducts bear research.

“At a time when support for science has generally eroded across Canada, an absolute explosion of discovery is occurring in one of the least studied, but most beautiful parts of the planet,” he said.

The foundation funds graduate students and post-doctoral students, most of whom are itching to have the opportunity to get out of their laboratories and into the field, Peterson said.

In addition to becoming a place where “brilliant students can come and do their work” it is also a place where various parties and agencies can come together and talk about controversial issues, Peterson said.

“It’s a special place where politics gets left at the door.”

Research Includes How Sockeye Salmon Are Coping With Climate Change

Research themes are based on answering important questions, excellent science and great opportunities for teaching, Peterson said.

But, even with those criteria, there have been surprises, such as the archaeology program, he said.

“I had no interest in archaeology, but people pointed out to me that, where we were on the Central Coast, was a particularly appropriate place to do world-class archaeology. That was our first hit record,” he said.

At the Research Exchange, researchers described nine sites around the Discovery Islands where evidence of human activity from about 7,500 years ago is being studied.

“And there is at least 6,000 years of human history before that time,” said Quentin Mackie, a University of Victoria anthropology professor, describing discoveries of stone tool technology.

PhD student Will Atlas is studying how sockeye salmon are coping with warmer water temperatures and hoping a tagging program will help explain how climate change will affect salmon populations around the Central Coast.

Sam Harrison, of the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre, is venturing into controversial territory as he looks at how diseases at fish farms are reported.

Information released by the federal government is useless as it is not specific — meaning it does not reveal which farms have diseased fish — and it is not accessible, he said.

“Disease publication matters because it enables independent research and informs decisions about farm siting,” he said.

Disease reporting falls far short of the information provided in Scotland and Norway, Harrison said.

For Peterson, the variety of research demonstrates that his vision has become a reality.

“There’s tremendous chemistry,” he said.

“It’s magic when (people) work on accomplishing something together.”

Image: Hakai Institute

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