Shaw Ocean Discovery Centre opens
Only a couple more days until everyone is invited to check out the Shaw Ocean Discovery Centre. Staff have been enjoying all the new additions to the habitats as they’ve come along. Each week it is like we are greeting a new addition to the family, complete with oohs and aahs from the staff. First it was the intertidal creatures, like anemones, sea stars and crabs. Then came sea pens, fish and more anemones. Later, it was kelp, herring and a few squid tagalongs. As we near the final weeks, wolf eels, octopus and salmon are moving in.
Where have these creatures come from? Visitors can be assured that our collection is obtained in an ethical, sustainable manner. All of the animals from the former Marine Ecology Centre have a new home in the SODC. The others have come from a variety of places. The ocean discovery centre has a permit, issued by the Department of Fisheries and valid for one year, that allows us to collect items for display. There are limits on how many rockfish or octopus, for instance, can be caught.
Mike Anderson, the aquarist, says that collecting takes place in a variety of locales, depending on the species he is looking for. “What we don’t want to do is take animals from places where they will be missed. We try to go to out of the way sites where the species is plentiful and will be quickly recolonized by others in the area. If we can avoid taking them from the wild, we will.” Our Chinook salmon were purchased from an island hatchery.
Sooke’s Whiffin Spit has clean water and an abundance of intertidal life. Some of the area around Saltspring Island has also been used. The Vancouver Aquarium has been very helpful to us in obtaining some hard-to-get species. They have a boat to help them in their collecting and have acquired some fish for us that way, at the same time they are doing their own collecting. They also have an established breeding program for some species and so acquiring some this way is easier and less intrusive. Our moon jellies and some anemones come from the Vancouver Aquarium. As the habitats get established, Mike will be capitalizing on any breeding or spawning that happens so that we can raise more for ourselves and other aquariums to use.
Some places are a little unlikely as collecting sites, but sometimes ease of access is a major factor. Staff went out to North Saanich Marina to collect herring with a beach seine net. This is where they also happened to catch three opalescent squid that were swimming with the school, who are now living with the herring. Kelp came from Dallas Road beaches. The docks at Port Sidney Marina are a great place to find chitons, snails, and sometimes nudibranchs. It was also here where Mike hung a few artificial pilings to get “seeded” by the local plankton. Tube worms, mussels and many other species start as larval stages in the plankton and settle on any available hard surface making it easy to start our own community.
So come by anytime and meet our growing “family”.
Linda Funk is educator at the Shaw Ocean Discovery Centre.
