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.

And We're Off... To a Great Start!

We've been busy, busy, busy and extremely excited about the new season which started March 6th. We are now open daily from 11am-5pm. Our opening day coincided with the opening day celebrations of the Pacific Rim Whale Festival. We have been getting the aquarium ready for another year of fun: Painting, plumbing, cleaning and labeling are all part of our preparations. What we needed next were critters! Some of our collection techniques include well orchestrated beach seines and the tried, tested and true method of bicycle-wheel-net fishing off of the dock. Materials used are high tech garbage pails, good ole scoop nets, and last but definitely not least our friendly local divers Sporty, Marcel and free diver, Darryl...you have all done tremendous jobs and we Thank You!

This last month, we took a short break from collecting and headed out into the communities. We were invited to attend marine career fairs in Ahousaht and at the Ucluelet Secondary School. It was great to see the excitement on everyone’s face as they got to check out our tank of sea creatures and ask questions about what it's like to work at the Ucluelet Aquarium.

For the past two weeks, we’ve been setting up friendly and suitable new homes for the temporary inhabitants at the aquarium to enjoy as they serve as the ambassadors of their species, teaching the public about lifestyles that protect the environment and ways to help conserve our oceans, locally and internationally. A big challenge for the JCP crew is learning husbandry techniques, which is a very important part of aquarium species placement. If done incorrectly, one creature in the tank could eat the other (oh my!). Just because they are in an aquarium doesn’t mean that nature still wont take its course!

Individual or family season’s passes are available so you can keep coming back for more education and fun anytime.

Thanks to all for your support and love. We can't wait to see you on the promenade this year.

Ucluelet Aquarium Reopening Saturday, March 6 - FREE to everyone

Join us on Saturday March 6 for the grand opening of the Ucluelet Aquarium's 2010 season! This year's opening is timed to coincide with the Pacific Rim Whale Festival and will be open EVERY DAY through September. Grab your field guide and a Ucluelet Aquarium season's pass and come hang out with us for a while.

Come visit some old friends from the briny deep and some friendly faces from around Ucluelet and join us for a day of celebration. Doors open at 10 AM and admission will be free all day.

Keep an eye on this blog for photos from the big event. Hope to see you there!

Working our way through winter...

A month has come and gone and the J.C.P. aquarium staff have been busy buzzin...ahem or shall I say, buffing. After hours upon hours of T.L.C. our tanks have finally and beautifully been polished. We have succeeded in our task of tank refurbishing! They have been wrapped up and a secure and safe storage facility has been located.

(photos A Zuck)

After this work was done Ash and Danielle were able to build on their knowledge with an exciting field trip to the world renowned Vancouver Aquarium. While there they had the pleasure of a three day Job Shadow with the knowledgeable aquarists of the B.C Waters exhibits. They learned about tank upkeep and cleaning, designing backdrops, feeding techinques and the daily duties of a cold salt water aquarist. They also learned the building blocks of interpretive skills with Melanie Knight! The experience there was extremely valuble and will be put to good use in the Ucluelet Aquarium with our re-opening just around the corner. A huge west coast Thank-You again to those at the Vancouver Aquarium for hosting us. Your hospitality made us feel right at home we hope to see you out here in Ukee this summer!

(photos A Zuck)

While the girls were away Kat, Kane and Dave back in Ukee were hard at work starting our collection of native trees, shrubs, and plants. These will be used for landscaping our new facility. We are on our way to a green aquarium!! A special thank-you goes out to Green Room Landscaping for their generous donation of soil.

The Aquarium is...Gardening? Intertidal Gardening, that is!

It’s a cold, dark and stormy Saturday night and we are dressed to the nines in our rain gear waiting for the tide to drop.

The foreshore of the aquarium is lit up by floodlights and a mighty beacon of white light from the helpful fishing vessel, Frosti, who were also giving us the Canucks updates on their booming loudspeaker. As we were waiting for the water to recede we were preparing our plywood forms, cement mixer, filling sandbags, and getting all the tools necessary.

The time schedule we were on was not ours but the mighty oceans. Our team consisted of Phillip Bruecker (founder), Dave Hurwitz (curator), Mark Cunnington (engineer), Chris Zamora (R.P. Biologist), his wife Brenda & their 2 children, Hedley Crowther, Deane Crowther, Kane Edwards, Danielle Hiscock, Ashlie Zuck & Kat McGlynn.

Finally the time had arrived… With tools in hand we approached the rocky outcrop that was soon to be Ucluelet`s first man-made tide pools. We quickly set to work; some of us clearing the rock and silt out of the tide pool area, others cutting and placing the concrete forms.

To prevent any seepage of concrete we lined the forms with a geo-textile and braced them with dozens of sandbags, while up above on the road the concrete was being prepared. In the concrete we were adding polyfibers in lieu of rebar for internal support. Instead of a regular cold water cement mix we added hot water to speed up the setting of the concrete walls.

Once all the forms and our textiles were in place we started hauling the freshly prepared cement down to the beach. We knew we only had a small window of time before the tides started to rise and our work would be halted whether we were finished or not. Everything ran smoothly and before we knew it all six walls were poured and the Canucks won!

The finished products!

Hibernate for winter? We don't THINK so.

Just because we're closed for the winter season doesn't mean we've stopped!
We have a crew of 5 working over the winter thanks to a Job Creation Program grant from the Ministry of Housing and Social Services.

Kane, Kat, Dave, Danielle & Jack (Missing from photo is Ashlie) [UAS]

Let's hear about some of our exciting projects!

Refurbishing tanks: Through volunteer efforts by UAS and generous donations from Living Elements Ltd., we have saved over 25 used aquarium tanks from the dump. They were obtained from aquariums and research facilities from as far south as Oregon and as far north as Resolute Bay in the Arctic. Their condition ranged from almost new and slightly scratched to VERY scratched with deep gouges. With the help of Mark Schnurr, an expert in plastic fabrication from Archer Plastics in Vancouver, we've been learning the correct way to remove dings and scratches from acrylic tanks to make them look like new.


Sand them down first [UAS]

Buff them back to life [UAS]

The work is quite satisfying and takes very, VERY close attention to detail.

BUILDING BACKDROPS: We've been creating backdrops for the tanks in the aquarium that will spend months underwater in hopes that many wonderful clingy creatures will use them as a home. The backdrops are a lot easier to use than rocks from the ocean with existing life because the backdrops can be customarily shaped to fit in the tanks. They are also a lot lighter so will be safer when placing them into the restored tanks.

Using bricks & plastic mesh as a base, forms are covered in concrete & left to cure [UAS]

BUILDING INTERTIDAL GARDENS: We've been scouring the intertidal zone on the foreshore in front the the new aquarium site (to be built in 2011) and mapping out where to build our intertidal gardens! Using the natural bedrock as a frame, these new pools will be full of life and easily accessible to the public in a safe environment. We're excavating rocks by hand & shoveling the silt. There will also be a bed for surf grasses and plants against the existing concrete wall. True to our nature, all species of plants and animals will be native to the area. If you see us down on the shore in front of the Ucluelet Aquarium, be sure to say hi and see what we're building!

FIELD TRIP: . We’ve taken a field trip to visit local riversides and stream beds to learn about and identify native plants in our area. Similar species will be planted in our seagrass bed on the foreshore to offer a different type of habitat than the tidepools.

Investigating local grasses [A.Z.]


Taking field notes [A.Z.]

It's still a flurry of activity down at our workshop at 1980 Harbour Crescent. It’s almost time to start collecting specimens for opening day of March 6th 2010. You’ll see us out collecting substrate for the tanks soon! Tank sponsorships are still available for the 2010 season. Contact our curator, Dave Hurwitz at 250-522-2782 for more information.