Eco cruising is great, August 17, 2011

What a great day driving to Canoe Cove for an eco cruise. FIrstly, though, just getting out the camera for our trip I managed to get some shots of California Quail in our back yard.

This was the first time to Canoe Cove for many of us despite the number of times we've used the ferry and gone right past the entrance.

The boats are excellent, it was like being in a living room, and, almost immediately we'd spotted a couple of eagles.

This was a young one, and

this one was more mature.  We saw around 60 or 70 seals including pregnant females and several young ones.

An obliging heron flew in for a photo-op.

Then we saw even more cute-looking seals.

This was our sister vessel for the cruise; it carried half of our party.

Our skipper gave an extremely interesting commentary throughout the two hour cruise. We pulled into Dock Cove, a natural dry dock for botton scraping.  We decided our bottom was fine but took in a view of the erosion etched larva...

...bull kelp, and a sea star. 

We took samples and learned about kelp propagation and growth in the ocean, the several uses of kelp by First Nations people in history, the interesting but rather disgusting way that sea stars eat barnacles, and the use of this small cove in the past. We also picked up a small crab that was clinging to the kelp. (Clinging to the Kelp - Wasn't that the title of an AC/DC album in the eighties?) Our sister ship passengers got to taste the kelp, but we held on for lunch.

Our final wildlife view was of cormorants happily drying their wings near to their accompanying seagulls.  The gulls keep an eye out for winged and other predators in exchange for fish the cormorants provide to them inadvertently.

As always, lunch was a feature of our trip, and we went to the Stonehouse Pub for a good meal set up on the patio. The weather cooperated; it was a glorious day for the whole trip. We took the scenic route back to the centre, calling in at the Red Barn. This was an excellent trip.  The cruise was fantastic and very interesting.  This could become an annual Let's Do It Day Trip.