The Endeavour Hydrothermal Vents...

The Endeavour Hydrothermal Vents Marine Protected Area off the coast of Vancouver Island covers a unique deep water ecosystem.

Located 250 kilometres southwest of Vancouver Island and 2250 metres below the ocean surface, the vents are part of the Juan de Fuca Ridge system, an active seafloor-spreading zone. At the vents cold sea water is heated by molten lava, emerging through the seafloor as plumes of particle-rich, superheated water.

Deep ocean areas normally have sparse marine animal abundance, but in the vent flows, abundances can range up to half a million marine animals per square metre.

Lion’s Mane Jellyfish (Cyanea capillata)

There are two types of cnidarians: the Hydrozoa and the Scyphozoa.

The largest scyphozoan in the North Pacific is the lion’s mane jelly. Large specimens can exceed 2 m (6 feet) in diameter with 9 m (27 feet) long tentacles. It is often abundant in coastal waters in late summer. The tentacles can give a nasty sting so it is best to leave this animal alone. In the water they are graceful creatures.

The lion’s mane jelly is a pelagic species is found from Mexico to Alaska. It eats plankton caught in the mesh of trailing tentacles which are drawn up to the mouth under the bell The Lion’s Mane Jellyfish grows up to 60 centimetres in diameter with two-metre long reddish tentacles. It is fairly common and well known to divers for its painful stings.

Marine Parks surrounding Southern Vancouver Island...

Marine Parks are coastal areas that have been given park designation to protect them from development and to ensure that the public has ongoing long-term recreational access.

Of the marine parks in the Victoria area, the largest and newest is the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve. Each of these parks has been established to protect specific ecosystems, species or heritage resources. When visiting these parks, it is important to abide by all of the posted signs and warnings, and not to remove or disturb any of the natural or heritage features.

Gulf Islands National Park Reserve

Established in 2003, the park protects a large portion of British Columbia’s beautiful southern Gulf Islands - a landscape of rocky headlands, forested hills, and shores studded with colourful tidal pools. The park resembles a patchwork quilt of protected lands interspersed among farms and residential areas and is scattered over 15 larger islands and many smaller islets and reefs. Several former provincial parks have been incorporated into the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve.

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Galiano Island

A long, narrow island, and the driest in the Gulf Island chain, Galiano Island was named after the Spanish explorer Dionisio Galiano, who sailed these waters in 1792. Galiano Island is the second largest of the Gulf Islands, after Saltspring Island.

We arrived at lunchtime on a Friday and found that Galiano Islanders move at their own easy pace, respecting and protecting a fragile environment which is home to over 130 species of birds and many rare and protected plants.

Rich in history and beauty, Galiano has been called The Jewel of the Strait of Georgia. For thousands of years before Europeans arrived, the Coast Salish aboriginal people had lived here, gathering a rich variety of foods from its forests and shores.

Galiano Island enjoys the reputation as being the most welcoming to visitors of the Gulf Islands and we can easily confirm this claim. This is due in large part to the limited amount of farmland on Galiano in comparison to other islands. Of necessity, early settlers here opened their homes to tourists as a way of earning a living and the relaxed and welcoming atmosphere of the Island was apparent from the moment we landed to the moment we departed.

Marine Protected Areas...

Marine protected areas are regions of the ocean and its bed that have been set aside to preserve representative and special ecosystems, plant and animal species, or unique features.

There are different types of marine protected areas of either provincial or federal designation including marine conservation areas, marine sanctuaries, marine exclusion zones and marine ecological reserves. They also include formal Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) as designated under Canada’s Oceans Act.

The common feature for all types of marine protected areas is that the activities allowed within the protected area boundaries, including access, development and resource extraction, are restricted to some degree for protective purposes. Unlike marine parks and recreation areas, marine protected areas are not created for recreational purposes, and access is often restricted.

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Lighthouses and Navigational Aids...

Vancouver Island has 3,400 kilometres of rugged coast, much of it unpopulated. Lighthouses and other navigational aids are necessary to guide and keep all vessels, from large ships to small pleasure craft, safe.

In November 1859, Captain Nagle, Victoria’s Harbourmaster paid one hundred dollars for a lantern and placed it on MacLaughlin Point at the entrance to Victoria Harbour. By October 1860, legislation had been passed to begin construction of the Fisgard Island and Race Rock Lighthouses.

The Fisgard and Race Rocks lighthouses were both built in 1860. They were designed to work together to safely guide ships from the Juan de Fuca Strait into Victoria Harbour.

Today, the British Columbia coast has about forty lighthouses, many of them staffed by with light keepers. Four of these lighthouses, and a variety of navigational aids, located in the Greater Victoria area, are featured here.

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Marine Ecosystems...

A multitude of marine ecosystems together characterize the ocean. The ocean is the largest aquatic system on the planet, covering over seventy percent of the Earth’s surface. The habitats that make up this system range from very productive nearshore and shallow water regions to dark abyssal regions more than 4000 metres below the ocean’s surface.

British Columbia’s Pacific coast is a biologically diverse and productive temperate marine environment. Island archipelagos, deep fjords, shallow mudflats and estuaries, kelp and eelgrass beds, strong tidal currents and massive upwellings all contribute to extra-ordinarily high biodiversity. The abundance of coastal marine life not only contributes to the complexity and total biomass of the marine food web but also provides food for terrestrial animals such as otters, eagles, ospreys, bears, raccoons, mink and humans.

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