Wildlife in Desolation Sound

Bald Eagles are unmistakable in Desolation Sound, which is the home for dozens of nesting pairs, often spotted far and high in the distance by the sight of their white head feathers juxtaposed by the green of the trees in which they are perched.

Eagles create huge nests out of an accumulation of twigs and branches high in the oldest trees and often return year after year to nest in the same location, close to the ocean, where they feed opportunistically on fish, dead sea mammals, and even smaller birds such as duck hatchlings that stray too far from mother.

Ospreys – or ‘fish hawks’ – are another well known and easily identified raptor often seen in the waterways of Desolation Sound, seemingly hovering in mid-air – a method known as ‘kiting’ – before plunging towards the water and more often than not emerging powerfully, soaked, with the prize of a fish in its talons. These large birds, flying with a ‘kink’ in their wrists that gives them a distinctive ‘M’ shape in the air, with white and black markings underneath, especially like to frequent estuaries and river mouths and can be seen in great numbers at the head of Theodosia Inlet, an intriguing and seldom-visited day-trip from Penrose Bay.

​A most common sight, especially in early summer before the young birds are old enough to make it on their own, is that of the mother merganser and her long line of ducklings trailing fretfully in her wake. These handsome birds with their rusty red ‘mohawks’ are easily distinguishable and abundant along the coast, especially amongst rocky islets or fishing as a family group in protected coves like our serene launch site at Penrose Bay.

Larger and preferring more dynamic conditions, surf scoters are regularly seen in spring and late summer, bobbing up and down in the waves offshore. These predominantly black, powerful looking ducks have a large, swollen bill with distinct orange and black markings, and come close to land only to feed on mussels and other small shellfish that they wrench from underwater rocks with their bills.

Smaller, but no less abundant and distinctive, Desolation Sound is one of the best places in the world to view the enigmatic marbled murrelet. These tiny, ruddy brown ducks are often heard before they’re seen, chirping their high pitched calls to one another as they emerge suddenly from below the surface with tiny fish between their bills. These birds are designed more for flying underwater than in the air – in fact they are closely related to the puffins off the west coast – often disappearing in front of your eyes as they dive for 30 seconds or more at a time before reappearing nearby just as suddenly as they left.

Finally, one of the most distinctive wading birds sighted all over Desolation Sound is the noble profile of the great blue heron, which despite becoming increasingly vulnerable across British Columbia is frequently seen standing silently, gazing into shallow water, before striking with great speed and snatching small fish from the water with their rapier-like bills.

Cormorants are diving birds that spend most of their time when not fishing standing upright on the shore, or on floating logs or breakwaters, in large groups with their wings outstretched to dry. This is because, unlike most seabirds, their wings are not waterproof, which allows them to dive deeper in pursuit of fish. Large colonies of Brandt’s cormorant exist year-round on Major Rock just north of Lund in the Strait of Georgia and can be seen all over Desolation Sound flying with a distinctive long profile, low over the water in single file.

In the lower branches above protected waters, paddlers are often startled by the surprised cackle of the belted kingfisher as it flits nervously from tree to tree, always seeming to keep just ahead of any approaching kayakers as they glide along the coast. These handsome, medium sized birds with blue and white markings are notably antisocial, barely seeming to tolerate each other let alone the presence of humans. If you can get close enough to watch a kingfisher fish, however, you can’t help but be impressed; they will hover briefly in the air and then literally throw themselves at the surface of the water, corralling small fish from side to side before they are able to snatch them up in the bills and return swiftly to their perch to feed.

A species of bird that will more likely hear, or even see evidence of its presence, before you see it, is the pileated woodpecker (and it’s close relatives the downy woodpecker and red-breasted sap sucker). All three species of woodpecker are found in the coastal woodland forests of Desolation Sound, tapping out a nest or searching for bugs and the sweet sap of conifer trees with their impossible strong beaks.

Paddle around any rocky point in Desolation Sound on a calm day with a nice low tide, especially if the sun is beating down on the bare granite, and you are likely sooner or later to come face to face with group of sunbathing harbour seals enjoying the warm summer weather, camouflaged against the mottled rocks with their colours of speckled black and grey and white.

Huge colonies of seals gather in certain locations throughout Desolation Sound where the fishing is good and the shoreline is accommodating. Two such locations are the cliffs on the western shore of Kinghorn Island – location of Cabana Desolation Eco Resort – and Major Rock north of Lund, where seals and all kinds of birds can be observed year round.

If you happen to be in Desolation Sound in the spring or fall, you may be treated to the sight – and sound, and smell – of overwintering sea lions in addition to our plentiful seal population. Most commonly encountered are the California sea lion, commonly hauled out on rocks, log booms and wharves, resting in the water with their flippers in the air to minimise heat loss, or powerfully surging through the water in search of fish. These eared seals have a very distinctive, honking bark, which often gives away their presence long before they are seen in person. California sea lions mostly head south to large rookeries in California and Baja during the summer months, but some small colonies do remain year round.

The harbour porpoise and Dall’s porpoise are commonly seen individually or in small pods of up to 10-12 members, silently surfacing their small dorsal fins in five or six repetitive arches before diving and staying submerged for 2-6 minutes at a time. From a distance these separate species of porpoise are difficult to tell apart, with the Dall’s porpoise showing a white dash on the dorsal fin and being slightly larger than the harbour variety.

A larger and more gregarious cousin of the porpoise, yet spotted less inside Vancouver Island, is the Pacific white-sided dolphin, which is usually seen in groups of up to 50 members, but occasionally in larger groups of several hundred or more! When in larger groups like this it is common to notice a huge mass of ‘splashing’ or choppy water making it’s way towards you before any individual members of the pod are identified. These dolphins enjoy riding the wakes of ferries and small boats, and can be identified by the white and grey markings on their underside and at the tip of their dorsal fin, their larger size than porpoises, as well as their ‘flamboyant’ behaviour including constant breaches and playful nature.

By far the most abundant sea star is the ochre star (or purple sea star) which can be found in huge clusters throughout the intertidal zone. These 5-rayed stars range in colour from purple to oink to pale orange, with a very hard spiny body, feeding on mussels, barnacles, limpets and snails, which they often digest  by pushing their stomach outside their body until the prey is broken down enough to retreat inside their ‘shell’.

Another conspicuous sea star that has been affected by the above disease is the multi armed (up to 24 in each individual) sunflower star, which is both the largest (arm radius up to 46 cm) and most predatory sea star found in Desolation Sound. These sea stars are soft-skinned and malleable, moving up to 110m and hour in its hunt for sea urchins, sea cucumbers, clams, sand dollars and even other sea stars! Closely related to the sunflower star in looks is the smaller and smoother morning sunstar, which similarly preys on other sea stars and elicits escape responses from many intertidal creatures.

Other common sea stars found in the upper intertidal zone and seen by kayakers include the leather star, which mottled brown and orange and has a smooth leathery surface (and also, apparently, smells like garlic if you are brave enough to put your face close enough to smell it!) and the pretty vermillion star which tends to drop deeper in the intertidal zone as the waters warm in the summer months.

Related to sea stars biologically if not in looks is the spiny California sea cucumber, a long orange and red cucumber-shaped animal covered with soft ‘spines’ on three sides, and a muscular ‘foot’ on the underside with hundreds of tube-like feet that enable it to grip tightly to rocks and crawl slowly in search of food. Due to the relative absence of its main predator, the sunflower star, sea cucumbers have been seen in great abundance in Desolation Sound in recent years.

What from a small distance looks to be a wall of glistening algae is often actually hundreds and thousands of small aggregating anemones clinging to exposed, low intertidal rocks. This species actually gets it colour by eating single celled algae that remains alive inside the body of the anemone. The colourful tentacles will retract when touched with your finger, and even give off a slight ‘sting’ in the form of a noticeable numbing anaesthetic, which it uses to paralyze and consume small fish and crustaceans!

Pacific oysters are at once the most abundant and most conspicuous shellfish on the coast, as well as the most profitable. These large, strong oysters with a fluted white shell were introduced from Japan in the early 20th century for their size, taste and rate of production that dwarfs that of the native olympia oyster which is has largely supplanted. Okeover and Malaspina Inlets are the centre of a vast aquaculture network that specializes in oyster farming right up and down the coast, with many small and large shellfish ‘farms’ visible in protected bays and inlets for importation all over the world.

Some of the most common and edible species of clam that is harvested in this area today include the Pacific littleneck clam, manila clam, and butter clam, all found abundantly and co-existing together on our beaches, harvested at low tide with rakes and garden forks! As the tide drops, watch for the telltale jets of water that shoot out of holes in the rocky sand, indicating the presence of a clam just below the surface.

There is also a small but lucrative commercial geoduck fishery in Desolation Sound. This clam is the largest intertidal clam in the world, with a huge, long siphon that cannot physically retract into the shell, giving an entirely comical appearance. These clams are only harvested recreationally at the lowest tides and can bury themselves at the slightest tremor on the surface up to 3 feet deep, making them very difficult to capture!

The most common larger crab found in these waters – found from rocky intertidal zones to floating kelp forests – is the shield-backed kelp crab, also known as the spider crab, with an angular, almost triangle shaped carapace and long slender legs reminiscent of a spider hiding amongst the floating seaweed – which is the main part of its diet – or lurking just beneath the surface on rocks and jetties searching for barnacles and other small crustaceans. These interesting crabs are known to startle unsuspecting snorkelers as they make their way through eerie looking kelp forests, though unless they are deliberately disturbed these crustaceans are far more interested snipping away at the kelp than they are snipping away at you!

If you are launching your kayak at our Okeover Inlet location at low tide, be sure to look down amongst the rocks and the sand and notice the thousands – probably tens of thousands – of tiny, colourful shore crabs scuttling along the ground both above and below the tide, feasting on barnacles and other miniscule sea creatures.

When paddling in Desolation Sound in late summer, before the first big fall rains that fill the valleys and rivers to bursting point, the waters are constantly disturbed by the splash and bright flash of salmon waiting for the right conditions to enter their ancestral spawning grounds to complete one of the greatest migratory and biological cycles in the natural world.

While some species  do have a spring spawning cycle, all five salmon found in these waters – chinook, chum, coho, pink andsockeye – return in great numbers to spawn in late summer and fall in streams and rivers all over the BC coast.

Another popular sport and commercial fish found in Desolation Sound is the rockfish – consisting of many separate sub-species – a large , extremely long-lived fish that often live to ages of over 100 years! To help protect these fish from overfishing in this area, a designated Rockfish Conservation Area exists throughout much of Desolation Sound.