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My Latest 8 diary entries:

Pete's Churchill Odyssey 2005

4th Oct 2005
A Whale of a time

Tuesday 4th October, 2005
My meeting is at 11.30 this morning and involves a half hour drive out to UVic, so we decided to take a quick turn around Victoria. Down to the market square which was just beginning to waken up and features such glories as a fantastic second hand camera shop and the worlds only Condom Emporium … which judging by the exterior has something for every size, shape, colour and errr, taste.
Its a busy place with a number of tourist shops all sporting their own stuffed bears at the doorway .. or stuffed moose and even a bear dressed up as a Mountie.
The journey to UVic was a simple one; out of the hotel, left on to Blanschard (for about twenty minutes) right onto Mackenzie (for about ten), park by the atheletics stadium and walk for about two. All in all dead easy and well done to Anne for finding such a well located Inn – right in the heart of the town and linked by the major routes.
The Sedgewick building was quite a labyrinth of passages rooms labs … and builders, but I eventually found Room 132, and within that Eric the leader of the Rocky Mountain Repeat Photography Project.
As head of the ES department, he’s up to his eyes in strategy, students, builders and his own particular interests which revolve around ecological restoration. The repeat photography is an important component of this.
We grabbed some lunch along at the University Club which was ideal; a very civilised haven right in the middle of the block, with hummingbirds darting around the bushes and feeding on carefully placed (so you couldn’t see them) feeders.
We had a bout an hour and it was enough this first time to get a feel for the project, scoff a bowl of soup with a sandwich and then wander back across. Eric then presented me with a copy of his new book on Ecological Restoration; yippee I thought. Its published by MIT and as such looks exactly like any other academic textbook … but in fact having settled down to it some hours later, he writes extremely well and the message comes across in a very clear way … and on the chapters I’m interested in, it of course draws in the repeat photography instead of filling the pages with graphs and diagrams.
Eric had another meeting at 1 and we parted agreeing to meet again tomorrow at 3pm and I drove back to the hotel. Anne had just arrived back from her explorations and was ensconced in front of the telly with a carry-out sandwich and coffee.
It was half past one; ‘There’s a whale watching boat leaving at 2’ says Anne … Well, there was a bit of a scramble, a quick phone call and then a fifteen minute power-walk along the inner harbour to where we could pick up the launch.
About twenty people on board this boat which once it cleared the harbour, floored itself to a cruising speed of about 35knots; it went at a hell of a lick, slightly worryingly it has to be said, as there are masses of floating logs and other timber debris littering the sea, Our shipmates were mostly German which sent out immediate warning signals about the hot flasks and cookies.
Along the way, our scientist, ‘Natalie Bsc’ chattered away through a microphone about safety, toilets, refreshments and 'booees' - bouys to you and i and god knows what to a German … and she also mentioned a little bit about sea mammals. (Why is it they have Rowts instead of Routes and Booees instead of Buoys?)
We arrived off San Juan island where there were a distant scattering of other boats and zodiacs all well apart. The odd splash and fin around the place indicated the presence of a considerable number of Orcas … about 90 they reckoned. As we drifted along, right in front of the boat a whale poked its head up out of the water and ‘spy-hopped’ the boat for a few seconds, before sinking back below the surface.
Inevitably, the bows became quite crowded with clambering Germans, cameras and even include one guy who decided to lie down across the deck so he could hold his camera still … he soon came up with a better idea after he’d been trampled underfoot a couple of times. Having been eased to the back by a series of storm-troopers and shot-putters, the photography was not going quite according to plan ... until I spied that there was a narrow deck extending out over the bows around which they had formed a respectful circle. With the elbows well sharpened and a few ‘excuse mes’ and ‘mind-your backs’ I got out onto it … only to find a beach towel carefully draped over the railings at the end, (joking) but it offered a grandstand view of the proceedings which I hung onto for the first half of the trip in spite of elbows in the back and people trying to poke their cameras over my shoulder. For the second spell I elected to try and get some shots of this melee, preferably with some prize German beef in the foreground … all of which went well until I was turfed from my commanding position by the crew … any way, I got one shot I wanted of a young whale playing around in front of the boat.
Back on dry land, I had a meeting at 6pm with Lisa one of the masters students at UVic and she had chosen the venue (‘OK, I’m just trying to think of somewhere, where you might appreciate the beer … lets meet at The Swan; Wharf and Pandora’). We duly renezvoused. She having arrived a bit earlier than me and had been accosting various lone males as they wandered by.
Anyway, faintly chewy beer but an interesting couple of hours. Lisa had abstracted some of the original survey information from the boundary surveys of the early 20th Century and applied this to a modern repeat survey to document the change in vegetation … supplementing this with the Bridgeland and Wheeler photographs.
Back to the Helm’s Inn at 8.

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Orca spy-hopping

The Rubber Rainbow

Us, whale watching
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