A New Arrival

Frequent visitors to the aquarium might notice something new when they walk in our front doors on their next visit. Last week, Matt Harbidge, from Green World Building Company, donated a new, custom built front desk. Matt constructed the desk himself using salvaged fir and cedar planks. The aquarium staff would like to extend a special thanks to Matt for his continued support to the Ucluelet Aquarium Society.

Where Do Babies Come From?

About a month ago we were admiring our school of Shiner Perch when we noticed that about seven of them were looking a little larger in the mid-region. Pigged –out on krill? Doubtful. The more likely possibility was that they were pregnant!

Shiner Perch have a complex mating system where the males perform a courtship dance for attractive females. If their moves are good enough the female might let the males mate with them. Sound familiar? Five to six months later anywhere from three to 40 babies are born.

After a few weeks our Shiners looked about ready to explode with their little babies. In preparation for the mass birthing, we relocated any potential baby eaters such as black rockfish, predators capable of turning the miracle of life into an all you can eat buffet!

On August 10^th the aquarium crew arrived to the work in the morning to find that our Shiner Perch had collectively given birth to around 40 babies, and a couple more were still birthing little ones; tail first…ouch!

The babies, 1 ¼” miniature version of their parents, are born so well developed that they practically swim out of their mothers. The males are also born reproductively mature with females maturing only a few weeks later.

This isn’t the first time this season that some of our fish have given birth. Last month our Tiger Rockfish gave birth only hours before she was supposed to go the rockfish breeding facility at the Vancouver Aquarium. Spawning is almost a weekly event in the aquarium with various species releasing mass amounts of sperm and eggs into the surrounding water. Visit the aquarium for answers about where babies come from!

What's In Our Water?

The Ucluelet Aquarium operates on an unfiltered, open system that pumps in water directly from the harbour. Because the water is unfiltered, we have plankton from the harbour water flowing directly into our tanks. This means that we don’t have to feed any of our plankton eaters, but it also means that we are constantly cleaning our tanks of unwanted growth. Our waters are teeming with life, most of which is too small for us to see. Given time, this microscopic plankton might grow into organisms that are more familiar to west coast beachcombers. This concept sparked our idea for the “Empty Tank” whereby we leave a tank empty with only water from our pumps flowing into it, don’t clean it and then see what settles inside. Its’ been just over two months now since we started, and in that time we’ve seen everything from hydroids to fish come through the pipes to make a home in the now “not so empty” tank. Colonizers include: hydroids, bryozoans, barnacles, mussels, tunicates, nudibranchs, a variety of other unidentifiable life forms, and most recently, crab larvae.

The Empty Tank isn’t the only tank that contains creatures sucked in through the pipes. Last week we replaced the sand substrate in our Orange Sea Pen tank and found that about 750 Soft-Shelled clams and Nuttall’s cockles had settled within. These clams would have arrived into the tank via the pipes as larvae, and then grown to about an inch in a three month time span. There were so many clams embedded in the sand that they began to compete with the Orange Sea Pens for space.

In nature, planktonic larvae use a variety of factors to determine which areas are good to settle and grow depending on suitable substrate, food availability, predator abundance etc. Some are more picky then others, but with the variety of habitats in all of our tanks, larvae are bound to find the real-estate they like.

Splash for Trash at Whiskey Dock

Anyone missing their bike? It may be at the bottom of the harbour!

As part of the Ucluelet Harbour Appreciation Day on July 15, volunteers from the Ucluelet Aquarium and Ocean Planet Adventures dove for trash under the Whiskey Dock. From bottles to bicycles, there was more then enough trash to keep eight divers busy for nearly four hours. While our aquarists Jaylene, Laura and Nate dove for trash with the Ocean Planet staff, aquarists Dave, Spencer, Larissa, and Kane, along with Mark (Sport) from Barkley Sound Black Seals manned the dock pulling up trash lines and returning animals that had made a temporary home in the garbage. By the end of the day we had collected a gigantic pile of trash which was hauled off for recycling and disposal by the volunteers from the Ucluelet Rent-it Centre.

The Whiskey Dock definitely lived up to its name with enough bottles residing under the dock to rival the depot after Ukee days. There were so many bottles littering the harbour floor that our dive team had to stop collecting them in order to focus our efforts on the more nasty stuff such as boat batteries that corrode and leach toxic compounds into its surroundings (we were able to retrieve three large marine batteries in the time available to us).

We also pulled up ghost fishers. Of course I'm referring to old traps and nets that become lost or dumped but continue to capture marine life. The days of fishing are over for an old Black Cod trap and the remains of fishing nets that we collected. Among the many critters that took up housing in bottles, we collected a tiny new Giant Pacific Octopus from an empty Gin bottle. He now calls our nudibranch tank home, but will be released in a couple months.

As well, I'm not sure if the CO-OP was aware that they were missing some of their shopping carts. By the end of the day we had retrieved three of them. CO-OP representatives are welcome to claim them, although its unlikely they'll ever push groceries again. Encrusted in barnacles and rust, most people probably wouldn't want to put their food inside. And if the wheels were present, they were so seized that you would be forced to drag the cart across the store as you shopped. The six bikes we pulled up weren't in any better shape. With so much corrosion and marine life growing on them, its doubtful even Ukee Bikes could make them operable again.

Other things collected include:
lawnmower
countless bottles
a car exhaust
stereo system
rusty cable wire
old fishing nets and rope
dinner plates and mugs
and a variety of car parts
unknown/unidentifyable scrap metal and plastics

The Ucluelet Aquarium Society strives to promote healthy oceans, and a large barrier to ocean health is pollution. This includes all the trash that gets thrown into the ocean both intentionally and accidentally. Much of our garbage is non-decomposable and may take thousands of years to break down, if it breaks down at all (think plastics). Although much of this trash is out of sight and out of the minds of most, it accumulates to wreak havoc on our oceans. With the success of this year’s splash for trash, the Ucluelet Aquarium hopes to make this an annual event to continue to promote a healthy harbour.

The aquarium staff would like to give a special thanks to: Katie Beach (Nuu-Chah-Nulth biologist), who organized the Ucluelet Harbour Appreciation Day; Mark Porteous (Barkley Sound Black Seals Diving) who organized and brought everyone together for the dive; Steve Bird (Ucluelet Harbour Authority) for giving us dive access; Tony Konefall (Ucluelet Rent-it Centre) and Chris Bird (Sonbird Refuse and Recycling) for hauling, recycling and disposal of the garbage; West Coast Aquatic for the beach cleanup; and of course Andy and all the fantastic guys at Ocean Planet Adventures who dove for trash and loaned equipment to the Ucluelet Aquarium staff.

OPAH!

What a way to start the day with a smell so fishy one might say. What was it coming from? The grandiose Opah fish, a.k.a. the Moon fish. Although a bit smelly, the beauty of this grand 100lb Lampris guttatus made it a treat to stand close to and admire from its iridescent coating and bright vermilion fins to its golden yellow eyes. It was definitely a sight to see. At the aquarium, we had the pleasure to view the Opah for a day and learn a bit of what is known of this rare fish. Thanks to Chris from Archipeligo Marine Research for taking it out of the freezer for us. This specimen was a by-catch from a hake fishing vessel and was being kept for further research.

We have managed to get all of the native plants collected for the landscaping of the new aquarium. In this last collection we succesfully transplanted some spruce , myrtle and pine. The pots that we used were donated and recycled from the District of Ucluelet and the landscaping from the new community hall. Thank -you to all for your support.

Growing the Garden

Thanks to the support from the BC Ministry of Housing and Social Services, our JCP crew continues to make great progress growing our “Intertidal Garden”.

[Wall seen on left as tide recedes. UA Photo]

After a successful concrete pour, our upper tidepool is almost complete, holding the receding tide waters and already showing signs of life! There have been sign of human life too as our new tidepool has already attracted visitors on its first day.

[Wall seen at top with sea stars! UA Photo]

Work will continue as the crew removes sediment and makes plans, weather and tides permitting, to construct another pool lower in the intertidal zone.

[Pools seen at bottom left with aquarium in backgroud! UA Photo]

Check back here for news as the spring unfolds!

From the deep

Far at the back of the Ucluelet Aquarium is a habitat that mirrors a place deep on the ocean floor. The first inhabitant you may notice has a fiery red coloration and eyes so big that the fish seems a clueless wonder. Due to its large dark eyes, the longspine thornyhead has been given the unfortunate nickname of the “idiot fish”. Ouch!

This groundfish, who lives 1-2 kilometres under the surface of the ocean off the coast of Vancouver Island, exists in a habitat of low oxygen, sunlight & food. As if that isn’t enough to adapt to! These ‘idiots’ also live in an area with an extraordinary level of water pressure. Not a lot is known about this wonderful creature yet it is still being fished for consumption in global markets.

What a great opportunity to come down and stare deep into those huge alluring eyes that will tell you stories about the world before we came along. You don’t really believe these fish are idiots, do you?

Who makes friends with an idiot? Tanner crabs and threadfin sculpins aren’t afraid to admit it.

Thanks to the crew of the Ocean Rebel, we have these guys to show off too. There may even be sablefish (a.k.a. ‘black cod’) swimming around. These are species that our normal collecting techniques (beach seining and diving) never allow us to see, so we are very excited.

We hope you will share our excitement and come down to the Aquarium for a look.