| Wildlife
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1. Cougar at Kains Island2. Bear at Addenbroke Island3. Killer whale attack at McInnes Island4. Alaska king crab5. Eagles bathing6. Death on Price Island |
 First Cougar - Fall 1972  Cougar  2nd & 3rd cougars arrived as a pair on same day in Fall 1973 - never found the body of the 3rd  Winchester 94 .30-30 |
1. Cougar at Kains! 
The first cougar was on station* when I arrived in the Fall of 1972. It had already killed a deer, scared the others away and terrified the assistant lightkeeper so much that he refused to come out of his house until the boat arrived. So, all unloaded, the house in disarray, work crew on station and not a cougar in sight, or so they reported. Good, time to work on removing the watery oil left in the oil stove carburetor. Halfway through the job, about 8 PM, Karen said "There's the cougar!" And sure enough there was the cougar, sitting on the highline deck in the evening light like it owned the place! I grabbed my rifle and headed bravely out the door. The cougar didn't move. I only had a Winchester .30-30 with iron sights and in the evening light I had to get close. I moved from tree to tree, small ones, which didn't really hide me at all but at least gave me a place to support the gun as by now I was shaking a little bit. No problem. The gun was sighted for 50 yards so all I had to do was get within 50 yards and fire. What's fifty yards in the near dark? Meanwhile the cougar still sat there like a large dog, looking generally in my direction but making no movement or sound. I crept closer. I was really nervous now. Hoping I was close to fifty yards from the deck, I levelled the rifle, sighted and slowly pulled the trigger. I never heard the gun go off as I was concentrating so hard on holding the sight on its chest. When I opened my eyes the cougar had gone, and in it's place stood the work crew. Not a drop of blood to show it had even been there! The crew had heard the shot and come rushing out from the spare house up the hill. With their help we finally found the cougar over the side of the deck and down the hill towards the ocean. It had been lifted off the deck by the force of the bullet and had come to rest against a log - dead! Kains is a 40 acre island and there wasn't room for us, one cougar, and no deer. - John Coldwell (Assistant Keeper on Kains Island (aka Quatsino) 1972 - 1975) **********************************
*The cougars used to chase the deer from mainland Vancouver Island to Kains Island. The deer swam across the 300 yard (350 meter) salt water passage to escape the cougars, and the cougars swam across to get their dinner! Once the cougars had killed and eaten the deer, there was then no more wild food available and they started searching around the houses for cats, dogs, and possibly young children. When they are constantly at your door it is a "little" inconvenient trying to get any work done.
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 Grizzly at Addenbroke |
2. Bear at Addenbroke!
This happened just awhile ago (April 2006) and below is the story as told to me by the lighthouse keeper, Dennis Rose, in his own words: ********************************** This was the first bear I have ever run into that didn't know what a gun was. He did start to come up the steps to the house one time and that's when I started trying to chase him off. I tried to scare him off with a few rounds from my shotgun but that just made him curious. I was busy building crates and getting ready to move and couldn't stay indoors like Coast Guard wanted me to do. He would come over every time I would start up a Skill saw or a drill. Coast Guard had given me some pepper spray last year and I tried it on him. Never having used the stuff before I didn't think about the wind direction so I pepper-sprayed me and my dog. The bear just stood there about 10 or 12 feet away (3 - 4 metres). I didn't hear him giggling but I bet he was. He hung around for 10 days and I had just decided to put him down when Fish and Wildlife (F&W) decided to move him. They showed up the day he left. They never saw him. I guess all the rounds I fired out of the shotgun finally scared him off. At one point he quit moving when I fired the gun so I loaded up a round of rock salt and salted his ass. After that he respected us a bit more. Yup, he was a grizzly. The biologist looked at the photos and confidently claimed he's a two year old weighing about 400 lbs. Notice though he has a fat round face. That is one of the earmarks of a mature male grizzly and it doesn't developed until they are around four or five. We've had a grizzly and a couple blacks [black bears] here every year since we moved here but they have never hung around the houses before. This fellow just wanted to eat the lawn grass. Well, he also chewed on the brand new station outboard and every garbage can I have on the station (I use them for rain barrels). He ripped up the bio-cell, flipped my packing crates and . . . lets just say he was a big fuzzy nuisance. F&W wanted to move him into another location where there are lots of females but no males. (Hey I live in a house like that, it's no picnic Yogi!) [Dennis has a wife and three daughters]. He never even attempted to open the composters nor dig up the fish heads I buried in the garden last fall. He didn't try to chase the dogs and apart from his interest in power tools he was willing to leave us be. Oh well, moves over, bear's gone. Now I can start getting ready for fishing season. - Dennis Rose (Present Principal Keeper on Addenbroke Island) **********************************
Dennis was lucky the bear didn't try to eat the Skill saw as this recent story shows! |
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 Killer Whales (Orcas)  Stellar Sea Lions  The highline anchor rock |
3. Killer Whale Attack at McInnes!
One early morning I was out on the water trolling for salmon from my 12 foot (4 metre) aluminum boat. The sun was just rising and I had just completed and transmitted my first weather of the morning. By the time I had a coffee ready, loaded rods and lures into the boat and lowered the boat into the water via the highline it was probably about 04:30. At the time I didn't have the money for a gas outboard so was using an Evinrude 2HP electric motor for trolling. Becauser of winds and tide this was only good on a a flat calm day which this was. As the sun rose it became warmer and I could see better. Behind me in Catala Passage the water began to boil and the herring gulls started to appear from nowhere. It was a herring ball!* This is always a fisherman's dream! Hopefully when trolling close to the ball one can catch a salmon that is feeding from underneath and forcing the ball to the surface. I turned the boat and slowly trolled over to the side of the ball. The salmon usually strike the ball and then drop down to pick up the injured herring and hopefully my hook as well. It was a large ball and the gulls were wheeling and diving and the small diving birds were intermixed with the gulls. It was a quiet morning but the gulls soon changed that with their loud cries. No bites! I was just turning to make another turn across the ball when my portable radio blared "John, there's a pod of killer whales coming around the west end of the island and heading your way." My assistant Dennis had gotten up early to do my next weather so I did not have to come in right away. He had seen the whales heading for the corner from up by the engine room. "OK, thanks Dennis. I'd better get out of here as they are probably heading for the herring". I also didn't know what the sound of my little electric motor would do to the whales - attract or repel them. I pulled up my lines just as a large killer whale rounded the corner and breached clear out of the water in a shower of spray and then landed with a splash that would have sunk my little boat. The resultant "smack" came to my ears a few seconds later after he hit the water. What a display! Behind this one were two more smaller whales all heading my way. Lines onboard I headed for the highline rock about 500 yards away (450 meters) and let the boat sit in the kelp by the rock and waited for the whales to come past the edge of the island as they were out of site right now from my position beside the rock. The herring ball was still milling in the center of the pass. Just then from around the corner where I was expecting the whales to show came six sea lions almost walking on the water they were moving so fast. They were close to shore and barely touched the water in their fear of the whales. I half expected the whales to be coming right after them but no, they appeared, and headed straight for the herring ball. I was so engrossed in watching the whales attack the herring ball that I completely forgot about the sea lions. Hearing a splash I looked around and here was I sitting in my little boat in the midst of the kelp when six sea lion heads popped up and extended half their body length out of the water. All six were so close to the boat I could have touched them and they were also watching the killer whales! So, all seven of us watched as the whales cleaned up the herring ball and later headed northwest out of the pass into deeper water. As the killer whales had probably cleaned up most of the herring and disturbed any salmon, it wasn't worth it to continue fishing. The sea lions, sensing no more danger, headed back to their rock at the front of the island. I turned and rowed back to the highline hook and got the boat ready for lifting. It had taken just over half an hour for the whales to clean up the herring and disappear. Sure wish someone had taken a photo of the seven of us hiding out behind the rock. It would have been priceless! I don't think the whales even saw us. *Herring Ball - a milling ball of herring fish caused by predator fish on the bottom and herring gulls, diving birds and sometimes eagles on the top, which causes the small 3 - 4 inch (8 - 10 cm) herring to mill into a ball and break the surface of the ocean with silvery flashes while trying to escape. - JAC - John Coldwell (Senior Keeper on McInnes Island 1977 - 2001) |
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 Canova on the deck at McInnes Island  Canova heading  Eagles in the trees  Whales bones on the beach |
4. Death on Price Island
On one of our beachcombing trips Roger Mogg and I headed up this small inlet on Price Island, just a few kilometres from McInnes Island .
The weather was warm and the sea in the inlet was smooth - not a ripple on it - which should have alerted us that something was wrong because we had just rounded the lower corner of Price in a bit of a chop. As we motored slowly up the inlet we noticed hundreds of bald-headed eagles in mature and young plumage. They were sitting on the beach, in the trees and on any available stone. The inlet was no more than one hundred yards long and maximum 20 yards wide and ended at a rocky beach. None of the eagles appeared alarmed by the sound of the outboard and we found out the reason why. At the head of the inlet was a stripped whale carcass. Not a piece of meat on it as far as we could see. No smell, no blood - only scattered bones and ribs. There was no way we could identify the whale from the few remaining parts although maybe a professional would have had no problem. The eagles had gorged themselves on the flesh and fat as it rotted in the hot sun, and were probably waiting for another one to wash in, or just enjoying the feel of being full. As we jumped out of the boat at the rocky shoreline we noticed a shiny film on the rocks as a barely-noticeable swell lifted a bit of seawater onto them. The tide was rising towards the carcass, but even from the distance of a few yards, there was no smell of death. Just quiet and warm sun and hundreds of eagles staring at us. The feet of our hipwaders slipped on the rocks and scared a few feeding rock crabs. There really was nothing much left on the carcass - no teeth, no baleen, no souvenirs at all. We loaded a couple of the smaller bones into the Canova and started to push off again. Then we noticed the water in the wake of the bow. On the way in, the sun had hidden the message. The water in the inlet was covered on the top with at least one inch (2.5 cms) of clear whale oil! In the hot sun the fat had rendered down and flowed down to cover the complete inlet. The slight chop on the outside of the bay tended to hold it there. The boat, the motor, our waders - and luckily nothing else - were all covered with a thin layer of oil. We carefully pushed the boat out, trying not to think of falling into that mixture of oil and water. Luckily the Canova is an easy boat to manouever and board. We headed slowly out past the eagle sentinels, taking a last glance at the bones on the beach. Speed was not an essential here as rubber inflatables sometimes throw a nice spray from their bow wave and we didn't want to risk a bath. Once outside and looking back again we could not see where the oil ended and the actual un-oiled water began - not a line. No wonder we never saw it on the way in. Amazingly, cleanup was not a problem as the oil was highly refined by the hot sun and cleaned of any residue by the sea and had no discernable smell at all. - John Coldwell (Principal Keeper on McInnes Island 1977 - 2001) |
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| John Coldwell (retired BC lighthouse keeper) Galvanistrasse 8 A-4040 Linz, Austria Tel: +43 (732) 750515  |