July has been an action-packed month for us aboard Freeranger as we settle into our liveaboard life and put new systems and equipment through its paces.
We've sailed over 350 miles with highlights including the Gulf Islands, Desolation Sound, Campbell River, and the Broughton Archipelago, British Columbia so far.
The marine and wildlife has been incredible. We've spotted dozens of bird species including bald eagles, turkey vultures, loons, cormorants, herons, gulls and more. At sea we've watched Steller sealions, sea otters, river otters, humpback whales, porpoises, white-sided dolphins and plenty of jumping salmon! Deer, mink, Douglas squirrels but as yet no bears!
Along the way we are contributing our cetacean sightings to the Ocean Wise’s Sighting Network using the WhaleReport app to support important conservation-based research.
And we've started submitting depth readings to the Secchi Disk study to help researchers understand the impact of climate change on phytoplankton. It's a unique global study, and the kids love it because they get to use an app on the iPad to submit our results.
We ordered 5 kits in May and hope to be able to share them with other boaters we meet along the way who also want to join in! If you'd like one let us know!
The public science project measures the amount of phytoplankton - minute organisms at the very start of the marine food chain - currently residing in the world’s oceans. To check the levels of phytoplankton in our ocean, they've developed a simple piece of equipment that you can order or make yourself and a free smart phone app for sailors and fishermen to use wherever they are in the world.
We are at anchor in a charming place called Sointula which aptly means “place of harmony” in Finnish. This charming seaside town on sprawling Malcolm Island was established as a community in 1901 when a colony of Finnish settlers arrived with utopian dreams of building the perfect community. While that vision was derailed within a decade, there’s no question these visionaries chose the right place for a fresh air and salt water paradise on earth!
We'll do some provisioning at BC’s longest running cooperative general store, formed as the Sointula Co-operative Store Association in 1909 before heading over to Port Hardy in the coming days.
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