Randall divides us into two teams for the work. LauraLee, Bruce and myself are one team, Laura, Jim and Diane make up the other. Today we're working with Fred in the skiff doing bottom camera data collecting, and the others are out in the whaler with Randall doing the photo-identification and otter behaviour study.
On the way out to the survey site, Fred spots a black bear on the shore. We watch it spot us and disappear into the trees.
Once we get to the station marked on the chart we lower the camera into the water. Its a small black-and-white camera attached to a metal plate together with a battery-powered torchlight for illumination. The plate is lowered on a rope and a cable brings back the camera picture. This is plugged into a box on the boat which holds the electronics and the screen. A fabric hood over the screen lets the viewer see what's going on in bright light.
We all take turns hauling the camera up and down together with coiling the cable carefully and looking at the screen. We see mostly mud but there are some odd little creatures and encrustations on the sea-bottom. For some reason I seem to describe them all in terms of food - small holes surrounded by debris look to me like bagels or doughnuts, mud has the texture of orange peel, and some seaweed looks a lot like cabbage. There are also these amazing feathery sea pens that sprout up from the mud.
We hear on the radio from Randall that they've been following an otter for for a while, and they want to know what sort of surface its been diving to. We head over and take a look at the bottom. Its soon lunchtime so back to the camp where Randall fries up some beans to make some burritos. He likes his hot food.
There's much discussion between Randall and Fred about what to do in the afternoon. Eventually its decided we should do some more investigation of the bottom where the otter was doing dives up to four minutes. Once we get out there Fred's depth-finder tells us its 70 metres deep. That's at the limit of the camera cable length, and quite a long haul to get the camera up. The light fails on the camera, so we replace the battery. Fred's depth-finder fails and he can't fix it there and then. It's now time to get back to camp.
We clean up the equipment and return to the cabin for dinner. It's our group's turn to help with the cooking and cleaning.
Fred's parents, Barney and Maxine, turn up. They are staying in the cabin across the cove for a while. It beats Los Angeles, I guess.
After dinner, Fred is encouraged to get his guitars from the Dancing Bear and he and I go over and pick up 2 guitars, an amp, and a mixer. We set it all up in the cabin and play a few songs for the audience, with limited audience participation. We get to bed about 11.
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