These days I walk not only just with camera in hand, but I also have my new binoculars in their case, slung messenger style across my jacket. There are strange sights at the beach these days and I’m ready.
On my way I look for signs of spring and find many. Clumps of daffodils are up, some blooming. Winter heather, both purple and white are in bloom, the purple giving sharp pops of colour in the shades of brown and green winter landscape. An early rhododendron, a pink, is blooming, a first find in the neighborhood.
The other day I went to the beach on this calm, bright-cloudy day (I am collecting expressions to describe a Left Coast winter – cloudy, overcast, drizzling clouds, partly cloudy, partly sunny, windy, rainy, bright overcast, grey, and once in a blue moon, spirit-soaring sunny). I could see as far as the two lighthouse islands – Sisters, over towards Texada Island, and the lighthouse on the south end of Denman Island, not far from Deep Bay where we keep the boat. There was only one fishing trawler in view, and a group of sea lions, lollygagging along the shore in a tight pack, flippers and snouts in view, and occasionally a couple of them barking at each other. By late afternoon blue sky had broken through – celebrating our turning the clocks back the night before, giving us a longer day to enjoy.
A quiet day at the beach. A very different scene from a week ago.
I was walking down by the beach that day, enjoying the view, taking a few snaps, watching the birds – and there were a lot of them. Above and on top of the water, swooping and yelling, many, many more than usual. It was one of those coastal British Columbia winter days, a complete veil of one color by the beach where sky, water, beach and mountains were all different shades of gray. Visibility wasn’t bad and you could see the outlines of Lasqueti, Texada and Hornby islands in the distance. Punctuating the gray were whitecaps and white gulls looking almost florescent in contrast.
As the afternoon went on, I noticed fishing boats passing by coming from the east – from French Creek and beyond. After a time the little armada kept growing rapidly – boats of all sizes, including larger ones that seemed to have tender boats attached to them. Leaving the beach, I took the pathway of steps climbing the steep hill to the road above, and reaching the mid-way point I stopped and looked back at the bay, and there, around the bend and just out of sight of where I had been at beach level, was an entire bay filled with dozens and dozens of boats, where thousands of white seagulls swarmed overhead. Huge activity. I’d never seen it before, only heard of it, but this must be the herring spawn and fishery.
The next day was bright and sunny, a day so celebrated on the rare times it appears in this season. “We must go see the mountains!”, so off we went to restaurant in Comox for a seafood chowder lunch in front of huge windows with views down to the harbour and up along the ridge of the Island mountain range beyond the valley, topped with tons of snow. On the way back we went looking for the bay where I had seen the fishing boats, and came upon an amazing sight of all the boats, the birds, swarming around after the fish along with scores of sea lions, looking like they were real close to getting in the way of the nets. Too many witnesses here but I’ve heard that sea lions dead from bullet holes are found along the coast not infrequently.
Leaving that bay we stopped in along Qualicum Beach to find that our bay was even busier than the other. The sun was shining and the shallow water of the beach was turquoise, like something tropical, not west coast Canada in March. I was told later that the color of the water is due to the spawning of the herring, reflecting in the sunshine. The fishermen are for the most part fishing for the herring roe, so the males and the female herring, after having their eggs harvested, are then sold for cat food or fertilizer.
The sight of all this frenzied activity and noise of the gulls and barking of the sea lions, with the sun glistening on all the colors was amazing, backdropped with clear views of both coastal and Island mountain ranges. The entire town, it seemed, was down at the beach that afternoon, and everyone was talking about it in the sidewalks, shops and parking lots for the entire week to come.
So this was the herring fishery. The following afternoon I walked back to the beach and there was nothing. No one there, other than half a dozen boats and tons (literally) of sea lions. It had come and gone in no time.
Sea Lions Feasting at the Herring Fishery, Qualicum Beach
I look to these daily walks as a way to help ground myself. You might say I’m still recovering from the trip to Burma and it has taken as long being back as we were actually away, for me to even begin to find my place back home again.