Alison Sinclair

Cross-posted from Kayak-Yak.

Once upon a time in Brentwood Bay, while drifting over rocks studded with orange and purple starfish, and past huddles of starfish in crevasses at the waterline, it occurred to me to wonder why they were these colours, that purple, in particular. The starfish in question were the ochre star, Pisaster ochraceus, and the answer, after intermittent and desultory trawling through the web and the scientific literature, turned out to be (a) carotenoids and (b) maybe what they eat.

The Royal British Columbia Museum Handbook Sea Stars of British Columbia, Southeast Alaska, and Puget Sound, told me a lot about the anatomy, hunting and mating behaviour, but does not account for the colours: P ochraceus is the most common intertidal sea star, with territory from Prince William Sound, Alaska, to Cedros Island, Baja California (lucky it!), and from the intertidal zone to nearly 100 m undersea. It likes rocky shores, waves and currents. I’ve seen plenty in the Broken Islands, the Gulf Islands, and around Saanich Penninsula. P ochraceus eats mussels, barnacles, limpets, and snails. It is the paradigm of a “keystone species” in that its presence and predation significantly affect the numbers and distribution of other species, especially the California mussel, Mytilus californianus; in the absence of P ochraceus, M californianus takes over the beach. Pisaster spawn in May to July, releasing millions of eggs, which turn into larvae, first floating free in the plankton and then (those that survive) attaching themselves and turning into juvenile sea stars. Juveniles grow to adult size and maturity over about 5 years. Larval P ochraceus have a chemical defense that induces filter-feeders to spit them out (got to look that up). The only known predators of adult sea stars are seagulls and sea otters.

Harley et al, 2006 (full text available) looking at the colour variation, note in their introduction that “at least two caroteinoid pigments mytiloxantin and astaxanthin, sequestered in the aboral surface, produce these colors in Pisaster and other asteroids.” Aboral is the upper side side of the sea star, and starfish belong to the Class Asteroidea, under the Phylum Echinodermata. Caroteinoids as a chemical class are named after their best known member, the yellow pigment in carrots, and have in common a long carbon backbone with many concatenated double bonds which generally absorb light at the blue end of the spectrum, hence the orange colour. Mytiloxanthin was named after M californianus, part of P ochraceous’ preferred diet, from which it was first isolated, so it was assumed to be dietary in origin. Astaxanthin arises through “several distinct metabolic pathways”, and is orange. I’m still not sure from my reading what the pigment behind the purple is, though reading descriptions of 1940s-style chromatography makes me oddly nostalgic for undergraduate chemistry.

However, knowing the pigments doesn’t explain why individual starfish should be orange, ochre, brown, or purple, or why starfish on an exposed, wave-beaten rocky coast like the west coast of Vancouver Island should be predominately orange (6-28%) and brown (68-90%), while those in the sheltered waters of the South St Georgia strait should be almost entirely that brilliant purple so familiar on our paddles (95% in the samples collected by Harley). The answer is apparently not genetic: DNA studies don’t suggest that the populations sampled (from Alaska to California, with lots of attention to Puget Sound) are isolated from each other, and conversely do suggest that there is flow of genetic material between them. It’s not apparently to do with wave action, inasmuch as scientists have been able to reproduce in the lab the difference between turbulent water and calm. It may be dietary, in that the distribution of colours correlated with the pattern of prey: in the more exposed waters (where purple starfish are in the minority), P ochraceus preferentially eat M californianus, the big California mussel, whereas M calfornianus is uncommon to absent in interior waters (where purple starfish are in the majority), and the Pisaster there tend to prey on barnacles and bay mussels. So, eats purple mussels -> orange; doesn’t eat purple mussels -> purple. Hmm. And that still doesn’t explain why purple and orange starfish could be found within yards of each other. Another paper by Raymondi et al, 2007 (only abstract) found that the frequency of orange in a population was constant with latitude, but tends to increase with the size of the individuals in that population. So all is not quite explained.

References

• Harley CDG, Pankey MS, Wares JP, Grosberg RK, Wonham MJ. Color Polymorphism and Genetic Structure in the Sea Star Pisaster ochraceus. Biol Bull. 2006 Dec 1;211(3):248-262. And here’s marine biologist Christopher Mah (full name from his Twitter feed), on the Echinoblog, with a crisp and colourful synopsis, complete with photos and diagrams; if I hadn’t written a chunk of this entry while back before I found his entry, I’d just have said, go there!
• Lambert P. Sea Stars of British Columbia, Southeast Alaska, and Puget Sound. 2nd ed. UBC Press; 2000.
• Raimondi PT, Sagarin RD, Ambrose RF, Bell C, George M, Lee SF, et al. Consistent Frequency of Color Morphs in the Sea Star Pisaster ochraceus (Echinodermata:Asteriidae) across Open-Coast Habitats in the Northeastern Pacific. Pacific Science. 2007 4;61(2):201-210.

(Cross-posted from Kayak Yak)

Starting back into the regular Monday-Friday routine concentrates the mind. Forecast of 10-15 westerly knots (again) notwithstanding, it was paddle Sunday or not at all, and the day that I got made me regret all the similar days I passed up.

(But I am not gloating, really, only on this particular day, the east won.)

It was Parc de la Rivière again: Bixi to the Metro, Metro to Cartier station, STM 73 bus in the direction of Fabreville – Laval, bless them, puts the direction of travel on the buses, unlike Montreal. Arrive just after 9 am in noticeably slanted morning light at the Embarcations, and stake my claim on a Kayak de Mer, the doughty orange Kasko.

I’m ashamed to say that I’ve only paddled the Parc once this summer, back in mid June, the continually taunting weather reports having fed into my third-book-and-trilogy completion neurosis; I kept procrastinating, waiting for a day with no wind forecast. When I was out in June I was impressed by how low the water already was. It made me appreciate that last winter had been dry. Last year in the early summer I was able to paddle through trees (and get munched on by flies), and venture into the marsh; this year, even the turtle pull-outs were well up the bank, the marsh was impassible beyond a short, narrow channel, a number of shortcuts, like the one out of the lagoon in front of the launch site, were above the water level. I’m simply not used to the water going away and not coming back 6 hours or so later. I found myself thinking that the originator of the expression ‘letting the grass grow under one’s feet’ as a measure of indolence had not observed river grass invading an exposed bank. There was no way of telling from the grasses alongside the river that that part was underwater a year ago. Today it was even more of the same. In a lot of places, if I’d tipped, I’d have been sucking mud, and if I’d banged my head on a rock, I might have been rediscovered like Lyuba, the baby mammoth in a million years or so. Although when I did wobble interestingly, it was because I was probing for the bottom with my paddle in what turned out to be a deep spot.

I took what has become my usual route, out the east end of the lagoon, and past Île Gagnon, where the water was extremely shallow, the bottom muddy and rocky, and I was conscious of tucking my tailbone up in anticipation of the grinding beneath. Up the south side of the river, under the Autoroute des Laurentides and the footbridge to Île Locas, checking out the completed swallows nests on the underside as I went – I’d watched the foundations being laid when I was out in June, beakful by beakful of dark river mud, trying to figure out whether one plan ruled construction or not. And then on to the marsh. This post was nearly entitled “500 geese, a dozen herons, and me.” This panorama, taken from beside the lookout on the edge of the marsh, should give the idea (note, those speckles are geese).

I let myself drift very slowly through a gap between goose-gangs, and discovered a dredged channel leading into the marsh, which terminated abruptly in a wall of black mud and sticks. I don’t think beavers were involved. If they were, no waterway is safe.

As last year, the great blue herons were out of their usual exclusive neighbourhood in the marsh, and scattered up and down the water’s edge west of des Laurentides, each one apparently aspiring to solitude. They seemed touchier than usual, and though I wasn’t trying to spook them, even when I swung over to the other side of the channel it didn’t seem far enough. Though there was the one I came on as I rounded a bend; it froze, I froze, and we played statues as the wind pushed me gently past and away. I also spotted a number of kingfishers dashing between islands, and some small white-bellied shorebirds I could not identify. No swallows, scattered dragonflies, and whatever moved beneath the water’s surface was safely hidden in mud. The water-lilies were looking tattered and tired, and there were scattered mats of purple river-plants.

Wind, yes, there was wind, intermittently. But there were spells of calm, allowing full appreciation of the flotillas of round cumuli proceeding overhead with perhaps just a little too much despatch to be stately. This panorama was taken at the furthest west extent of the Parc, at the tip of Île de Mai looking west. One day I shall go beyond …

I rounded the tip and came down channel between Île de Mai and Laval, brazenly floating down the middle of the channel while munching on a roasted mushroom and chevre panini, something I’d never have dared do in the middle of summer. I paused to admire and take pictures of a weeping willow planted above a wall and draping down almost to the water. While I was doing that, the first power boat of the day passed by, sending the water sloshing and my kayak rocking. Then I swung back over to make a pit-stop on Île Chabon, muttering ‘I must do more of this’ as I floundered to dismount onto a steeply sloping beach. Two or three canoes had reached the lookout and the geese had scattered. Then I paddled back the way I had come through the channel towards the des Laurentides bridge. I was well into my fourth hour and a day rental, so I paddled around the north side of Île de Jiufs, but had decided to cut myself off at 5 hours and get the 2:30-something bus, so back into the lagoon, which was crowded with single and double kayaks and two person canoes, heading out to enjoy a gorgeous warm afternoon. Would that it had been June!

My fake GPS plot – just Alison ‘taking a line for a walk’ as we used to call it in kindergarten. Unfortunately, I can’t recall where I got this image from, or I would have updated it to show the difference between then and now.

Cross-posted from Kayak Yak.

Perfect days don’t just happen in the West Coast Paddling Paradise – sometimes they happen here in the east. Today’s forecast was for calm until the afternoon, then 10-15 knot SW winds, and a high of 25 C, and that is exactly what I got on today’s trip to Parc de la Rivière-des-Mille-Îles (actually my fourth). Despite a technical hitch involving my Opus (Metro) card and a missed train, I was at Cartier station in plenty of time to catch the 0829 #73 bus and discovered to my pleasure that the #73 was no longer on diversion prior to the Parc, the resurfacing on pont Marius Defresne (the right-most bridge on the map) having migrated south of the intersection with boulevard Ste-Rose . I alighted at the Parc gates, was just about first up to the counter to rent a kayak de mer, and paid attention to the paddle (feathered), the seat (snugly fitting with solid back support) and the footrests (adjusted to my height), all of which I’d neglected to check the last time I was out (last Monday). I let myself drift off the dock while I made sure I found the panorama settings on the Olympus waterproof – I’d decided that traveling with two point and shoot digitals and one film camera was maybe a little excessive. Then I headed north-east out of the entrance of the lagoon, around the tip of Île Gagnon on water that was so glassy the kayak just slip-slid along, every so often twitching with a fillup of river-current. The skin of the water was alive with tiny water-beetles, like tossed handfuls of blue-black seed-beads.

Pausing frequently to take photographs, I moseyed up in the direction of the wetlands area I’d discovered in my first trip back in July. At the time I set out, the sun was filtered by a thin film of cirrostratus, with denser streaks of cirrocumulus; it looked like the weather was changing, but by the time I reached the wetlands, the cirrostratus had cleared and the sun was alternating bright sunshine with the shadow of small cumuli, and in the four and a half hours I was out, the clouds – small cumuli and cirus – gathered and dispersed several times, none of the clouds dense or substantial enough to more than dim the sunlight. The wind, as forecast, did not pick up until close to noon, at which point I was paddling south against the current on the west side of Île de Mai, the long island running north-south at the left of the map.

I’ve been out four times now, twice in July, once at the end of August, and today. The water-level has appreciably dropped, such that the flooded stand of silver maples I got to paddle through in July (nourishing the resident flies in the process) were quite dry and aloof to the water now, and the hairpin between Île des Jiufs (how I read it on the map) and Île aux Fraises (both north-west of Île Gagnon) was because I got all the way through and found the channel blocked by a ridge of toothy boulders and the branches and debris they had strained out. A large culvert beneath the peninsula that carries the autoroute des Laurentides (the second river-spanning bridge) was also impassible due to a snag. I had more scrapes and grounded out my paddle more often today; on the up-side, a summer’s growth had brought the weeds very close to the surface, though they were too thick with algae and mud for me to recognize more than ribbon-shape or branching brush-shape. And as I paddled down to the south of Île Lacroix (just east of the marshlands) on my return I was able to look down and see schools of tiddlers scattering at the vibrations of my passage.

I’d meant to go into the marshlands, as I did in July, but there was a great blue heron fishing in the shallows just beside the one barely navigable channel – I’d made it a little way up that channel on my last outing, but between the water level sinking and the summer’s growth of reeds and weed, it was only a little way. So I stood off and watched the heron prowl along the edge of the reeds. There is something catlike about them, with the stillness, the hunkering low, the pounce – and the little ruffled insouciant shiver as they collect themselves after a failed strike. There were ducks aplenty, mainly mallards, browsing in pairs and more often than not standing tails to heaven in the still waters. I caught sight of a single kingfisher, a flash of white against the trees, and later on saw two flying between islands, squabbling all the way – are they territorial birds?

After the wetlands, I wanted to circumnavigate Île de Mai, the recommended way this time. The second trip I made in July, I looped out on the west side of the island and nearly did not make it, hitting what I suspect was an underwater bar within sight of the end. It was also the day after severe thunderstorms, when the water was murky brown and running fast, and there were downed and split trees all along the channel. I came to a standstill, paddling full-force, and had given up and was drifting downstream when in a fit of cussedness I decided to try the other side, crossed over, and succeeded in paddling through the stall, though literally gaining an inch at a time at one point. I was consoled that a two-person canoe whom I passed on my downstream drift, wound up doing exactly the same. It wasn’t until I got back that I looked at the Parc guide and saw that the marked route went up the east side and came down the west. So this time I did it the easy way. No stalls, though some churning water off Île aux Moutons (the small island north east of Île de Mai, and definite current, then wind. A small culvert underneath that promontory was open this time, and I paddled against the wind and the current up to the open waters, where the powerboats were churning in circles. Those coming through the channel kept their speed down, with one exception, a white powerboat that came crashing past Île de Moutons as I was starting up the channel, steering between a pair of kayaks. The buzzed kayakers coped all right, but a couple of others in the vicinity were visibly uneasy being bounced around in the reflected waves.

Having made it to the tip of Île de Mai, I got to ride down with the wind and current, and when I hit the point I’d hung up before, I got a brisk kick from behind, much easier going north than south. I needed a pit-stop, so I turned back to Île Chabon, which was marked on the map as having latrines, and, since there was no helpful signposting, walked three quarters of the way round the island before finding the sign and the hutch in the wood (with toilet paper, too). On the sunny side of Île Chabon, the turtles were out once again, warming themselves on fallen logs and rocks; I still don’t know what kind they are, not having been allowed close enough. Then I headed down through the weed-clogged channel south of Île Lacroix, tiddler-spotting and being buzzed by dragonflies, large black and smaller bright blue. Ducked under the bridge to Île Locas, avoiding fishing-lines slung from the bridge, and under the long autoroute de Laurentides bridge. Decided that I was not going to make it back within the four hour mark and I might as well be hanged for a sheep, etc, so detoured across to try and navigate the channel between Île de Juifs and Île aux Fraises, and found it blocked, so I then doubled back around the western tip of Île Gagnon, under a bridge into the lagoon, and found it milling with boats as the holiday monday afternoon canoists and kayakers and peddle-boaters all turned out. Lingered in the Interpretation Centre until my (hourly) bus was due, puzzling out the descriptions of the river milieu in French and writing down names of plants to look up. Aside from the water-lilies, one of the water-weeds was flowering, small dense pink flowers on conical stalks, forming mats along the edges of the reeds, downstream from the islands, and even at shallow points in the middle of channels.

More photographs to follow in my Flickr collection. For now, I must acknowledge the imminence of Tuesday.

Days spent in NZ: 9
Days spent kayaking: 3
Kayak trips blown out: 2
Number of sandfly bites: 40+ (about 20 on my hands, since the bug lotion kept washing off)
Photographs taken: in the region of 100

I spent the first 3 days with family in Auckland. On the Thursday I signed up for an evening trip from Auckland to Rangitoto, which is a 600-year old island created by a volcanic eruption, but the wind came up and the trip was cancelled. Friday I flew to Queenstown, and took a bus to Te Anau. Saturday and Sunday I took an overnight trip into Doubtful Sound in Fiordland. This consisted of a 6 am start, van to Manapouri, launch across Manapouri Lake, a huge lake greatly expanded by the construction of a hydro dam in the sixties, then van up over the pass, and down into the sound.

This is fiord country, and rainforest – 8 m or so rain a year, and a daily record of 50 cm [corrected] – and stunning is hardly the word for it. Because it is so wet, because the rain streams constantly down the slopes, moss, lichen and ferns grow almost to the vertical, infiltrating the rock; the mat can be a meter thick, thick enough to root trees, so the trees grow up slopes so steep they almost appear to be growing parallel to the slopes – when not jutting out at wild angles. As a result, Fiordland is prone to tree avalanches – a high wind, an earthquake, or simply age and time can cause a tree or trees to lose their grip and fall, and because the roots are interlocked and embedded in the moss, the entire mat and forest comes away, stripping a wide triangular blaze down the rock and leaving it bare, to be gradually recolonized over decades by moss, ferns, and then the trees. The landscape is classic glaciated valley, steep, steep sides, the scale not appreciated until you see a group of kayaks at the base of one of those slopes looking like painted slivers of wood – the peaks around are in the 1500 m to 2000 m range. There are multiple long, long waterfalls, which look like white threads down the slopes.

We loaded all the gear (which we had loaded and off-loaded at each transfer) onto four double kayaks, with the guide in a single, and headed out from a spot called Deep Cove towards the sea. Weather was a little windy, misty, rainy, sun the occasional watery glimpse, though we were seeing the peaks around us. We paddled about 6 hours the first day, allowing for stops, and my winter of sheltered flat-water kayaking had not prepared me for it. My arms began to complain within 15 minutes, and after a couple of hours I managed to shift the complain to the muscles where it belonged and stop fighting the water every stroke. We campled overnight in a basic camp in the rainforest, consisting of a permanent mesh tent on a platform for a cooking/recreation area, a series of linked gravel areas linked by a winding and very narrow path which led to the composting toilet, enthroned a story above the forest. We were only supposed to use that for solid waste and the forest otherwise – I have bites in places not normally exposed to the air! I haven’t camped since tents were put together with a ridge-pole and supports, and I was short enough to stand upright in a tent. But I survived a largely sleepless night of wondering “what’s that???” at each rustle, and because I was blundering around in the early hours with a torch, I glimpsed a kiwi scuttling around the mesh tent.

The next day we struck camp early because there were strong south westerly winds forecast, and although Doubtful sound is very long and we were well inland, we did not know how that would funnel. We paddled out of the side arm where we had spent the night, and turned up towards the sea, intending to go around a long island in the middle of the fiord, but as we beached for a bio-break, we saw the first darkening of the water up the sound, and we paddled out into a squall, about 15 knots. Quite enough for yours truly, who couldn’t remember which side to apply a low brace on – fortunately it was needed. But as the seas got heavy, we rafted up, boats banging against each other, sorted out the steering – to stay with the wind and swell behind us, we needed to ply rudders, and raised sail, and cruised down the fiord towards the embarcation point on the wind and swell. After several hundred meters the sail expired and flopped across us, and we reeled it in, and kept paddling. Between the wind, the slow swell behind us, and the early start, we were in before 1 pm, although we were not caught by any more squalls, only drizzle that socked in the fiord between us. Then we off-loaded, re-stored the boats, loaded up the van and headed to the vantage over the outflow from the dam (two tunnels, draining into Doubtful Sound) and likely perturbing the ecosystem.

The ecosystem of the fiords is an interesting one, and it was the undersea aspect that originally got me interested in the area: the copious rainfall leaches substantial quanties of tannin and other products of vegetable decomposition into the fiords. The water is very deep and very dark, but even at the edges with pale rock underneath, it’s the colour of weak tea, a dark brown. So this shades the depths, and there are sponges and corals in the fiords that grow at 40 m or less below the surface that elsewhere grow at 200 m down, under the standard photic zone.

On the Monday I was supposed to go to Milford sound, but when I dragged myself out of bed at 6:30 am I felt so trashed I phoned and cancelled, went back to bed and slept until 11 am. As it turned out, it bucketed all day, there was a 25 knot wind in the fiord, and all kayaking trips were cancelled. I couldn’t rebook with the same group I went out with (all spots full), but there was another company, so I booked with them for Tuesday. Milford sound is the best known of the sounds because there’s a tarmac’d road from Te Anau into the Sound, 2 h spectacular driving along the shores of Lake Te Anau (glacier lake about 60 km long), then up through beech (not your northern beach) forest, through the Homer Tunnel (site of the Homer Nude Tunnel Race), and down – and I do mean down! – into the valley. Completely different weather – whatever front had come through had blown itself out – and we had brilliant sunshine all day. The morning had been cold, and I didn’t add much to my crop of sandfly bites, but I washed all the sunscreen off the backs of my fingers, so I’ve added scorched fingers to my plaints. Hardly any wind: the disturbance on the water was the wake of multiple tour launches, giving us the occasional half or so meter swell to ride. This time I was NOT the oldest person in the group, and my paddling was much better. Clear sight of the mountains, which are slightly drier and less moss-coated than Doubtful, but still steeply treed, and since it had been so wet the previous day, there were multiple waterfalls threading their way down from the heights.

And we saw dolphins. We’d were crossing at our midway point when we spotted the fins and soundings, and began paddling after them. They changed direction and charged past us, between us, on their way to meet up with a large launch behind us – we held no interest for them at all. Alas I was too busy watching the dolphins to press the shutter as two of them bore down on my kayak and surfaced almost within touching distance, and it was all over very fast. They intersected the lanch and were carried off with it, several of them literally riding its bow-wave. They’re bottlenose dolphins. We didn’t see the dolphins in Doubtful sound, which are supposed to be a distinct pod that only live within Doubtful sound – I have to look up the genetics.

We also saw juvenile fur seals, young batchelors kicked out of the herd to make their own way; a pair of moulting Fiordland crested penguins; a white gull of some kind which had obviously discovered kayakers as a source of food, hopped out of the water to perch on our kayaks; paradise ducks, with pure white head and red tail.

We pulled out at the start point after about 4 hours, and headed back to Te Anau at a very leisurely pace, stopping at multiple scenic points; got back to Te Anau just before 6 pm. I dithered, and then trotted along to go standby to see the Te Anau Gloworm Caves, which is a topic for another post, as I shudder to think how much I owe the Internet Cafe now (I started out to check my email, really … and if Blogger doesn’t save this, I will cry!)

Yesterday, in the pouring rain, I caught the 8 am bus from Te Anau to Dunedin, and here I am in Dunedin, with gale force winds forecast for later today. I didn’t move very fast this morning, and so I missed the calm, if there was calm – I looked into kayaking out around the Otago penninsula this afternoon, but no go – too windy. Now I have to work out what to do for the rest of the day! Tomorrow morning I have an even earlier start, for a flight up to Blenheim at the north end, where I hope, if the weather cooperates, I will get out on the Malborough Sounds and along the coast of Abel Tasman park.

And even at this length, this is still an abbreviated report.

(Originally published at Kayak Yak Yak)