I’ve been on Vancouver Island for months
but up till now I’ve mainly shown you
the island from the land a boat or
underwater or today I’m taking to the
air for a totally different perspective
from the air I can see this island board
it really is
a massive wilderness now looking at this
coast to an untrained eye you’d think it
was perfect pristine but if you squint
you can see signs of humanity dotted
along the coastline
in fact down there that’s the boat of
the wildlife guys who introduced me to
Vancouver Island and got me hooked on
this place
this is a rainforest but it’s not a
tropical rainforest that you might be
thinking of it’s a temperate one which
basically means it’s cooler
but it still gets an epic amount of
rainfall
the rainforest provides great habitat
for all the wildlife here but the more
critical driver of this ecosystem is
right below me right now all over the
depo shot the Pacific Ocean and out
straight ahead of us the next bit of
land is there is Russia and Japan it is
a huge huge ocean now usually the
biomass produced in oceans slowly sinks
down into the depths but once again this
coast is far from the usual in a process
called upwelling the open ocean
nutrients is pushed back up to the
surface right along this coast filled
with a network of seelix
and it’s in these inlets that the tides
just whispered they pull in nutrients
from the ocean into these inlets
inland these bays and esters are just
packed full of life even huge 40-ton
animals humbag whales are so large you
might think they belong in the open
ocean but here they can thrive because
of the small fish that have come in land
to feed but I’m going to film much more
than just humpbacks drafted along this
coast are these rocky outcrops and off
some of these rocky outcrops there are
speller.c lines – Dadda balls which roll
out onto the rocks and and at rest
between fishing belts
I swam with these you see lives that
need thee more than 6% of their body
weight every single day and if that
doesn’t convince you of how rich these
waters are they aren’t even the top
marine mammal here
in these same waters there are orca that
specialized in killing sea lions it’s
crazy to think that so many massive
marine predators can be so close to the
shore but it’s not just the marine
mammals that depend on these rich ocean
waters there’s a huge diversity of
feathered animals that make their living
here including America’s national bird
the bald eagle but coastal birds make
sense perhaps a bigger stretch of the
imagination is the black bear
this seafood feast is part of the reason
why this island has one of the highest
densities of black bears on the planet
the link between the Pacific and the
coast really comes alive in the autumn
when one of the largest migrations in
the world happens here the summit would
spend their adult lives most of their
love lives in the open ocean they
migrate inland and they head up to the
trucks of all the MX where there’s
rivers and as they go up those rivers
that’s where their next morning they’re
reproducing but when they get in land
there’s a whole world coming party
waiting for them
this is one of the only instances in the
world when Morita nutrients comes into a
land system even though I’ve separated
my adventures into episodes about
individual animals this doesn’t do the
ecosystem justice everything is part of
a bigger picture but there is one part
of the picture that I’m still missing
the apex predator of this food web and
that’s why mike eagle by creme de la
creme my holy grail is to find the
coastal horse one of the most pollution
animals found here there at the top of
the food chain and so far all they’ve
done is outsmart me they’re just an
incredible incredible species that have
adapted their lives from a traditional
crust reliving the take advantage of the
seafood feast that is found on these
beaches they’re the closest you can get
to being a marine mammal without
actually living in the water and I’m
gonna give it everything I’ve got to
find one
and so now we’re just coming into what
is my base Tofino but this seems like a
pretty fitting entrance for an amazing
plate thanks Sean those focal my
pleasure absolutely
it’s from him I’ll be setting off in my
de in search of coastal wool
hey everyone I hope you enjoyed that
that was pretty bonkers the film this is
actually an episode in a big series so
if you’d like to see the rest of the
series click on the playlist just here
and I will see you next week for another
bonkers wildlife encounter
