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The region I’ve chosen to study is Cates Park, a North Vancouver District municipal park. It is also known as Whey-Ah-Whichen, “Faces the Wind,” by the Coast Salish Tsleil-Waututh Nation, whose territory the park is situated.
📷Perimeter of Cates Park, courtesy: Google Maps
I first visited Cates Park for this study on Wednesday, November 28, 2018, at 1530h. The weather was overcast with light rain and no wind, so the sea state was flat and mirror-like. It was 8°C in late fall, and the tide was ebbing until 1640h, but this low was only 3.1m. Tidal variances in this area can be as high as 5m, but today the change was only about half a metre.
📷Looking east towards Port Moody Inlet, at the Roche Point flashing marker and layers of kelp at various tidal levels along the beach
Cates Park offers an ecosystem to which I am familiar, so the subsequent field observations will allow time and attention to more thoroughly analyze the Coastal Temperate Rainforest and its interactions with the sea. Other points of interest in Cates Park include Coast Salish cultural and environmental history, that Whey-Ah-Whichen is one of a very few seaside parks along the busy, industrial Vancouver shoreline, and is directly across the Burrard Inlet from an oil refinery. Local current events include ongoing environmental protests to stop an expansion of a pipeline that ends across the inlet. Tanker traffic is reported to increase 7 fold.
📷A tanker is escorted out of the Burrard Inlet
Whey-Ah-Whichen is a point of land at the meeting of the Burrard Inlet, Indian Arm and Port Moody inlets, with approximately 60 acres of forest, sandy and rocky seashore, and trails. To its north lies Dollarton Highway, a coastal road towards Deep Cove. The park is influenced by human factors, as visitors walk dogs and picnic with family, kayak and beach comb, and vehicles pass by both along the road and the waterway. The trails are maintained and occasional stairs lead from the forested pathway about 2-5m down to the beach.
The beach is composed of sand, rocks, pebbles and shell midden in some areas, and rises a few metres to meet the forest. A variety of kelp found on the beach include rockweed, turkish towel and sea lettuce. The forest has a gradient from the more sunlit seashore to shadier inland, including shrubs (red huckleberry, salmonberry, salal, wild rose, blackberry, common snowberry), trees (red alder, black cottonwood, broadleaf maple, western hemlock, western red cedar), ferns, grasses, mosses, lichens, bracket fungus, dandelion and ivy. There is a small freshwater stream halfway along the Malcolm Lowry trail and it dischargers on to the beach.
📷Field Notes pg 1
📷Field Notes pg 2
In terms of wildlife, sightings were sparse. Barnacles are abundant, and I expect to see more intertidal life closer to the new and full moons, where there will be more tidal exchange. I’m looking forward to spotting sea stars, shore crabs, harbour seals, small mammals and birds of prey in the future.
📷Barnacles abound
Potential Study Subjects:
Nurse logs are abundant on the coast, as trees that have either fallen or were logged support life for new seedlings. They decompose very slowly and allow their hosted trees to grow for decades and root around them. What nutrients do nurse logs provide, how much of a carbon sink are they, and which plants tend to use them more often as a bed for new growth?
📷Two western hemlock trees encompass a nurse log stump, with buttress roots that cascade toward the ground
Sea stars are a keystone species and top predator in their ecosystem. Recently their populations were devastated in a mass die-off from sea star wasting syndrome. Are there sea stars along in the intertidal zone of Whey-Ah-Whichen, do they show signs of the disease, and to what extent? How has this impacted their prey and other features in the intertidal zone?
The forest along the coast has evolved to thrive next to a salt water environment. What nutrients are brought from the currents of the inlet, how well do trees and shrubs thrive next to the ocean versus inland, and to what extent does the extra sunlight beside the beach help mitigate effects from salt or storms of the sea?
📷Western red cedar branches hang over the seashore
Coast Salish people have used this area for centuries, their culture thriving on the abundance from the ocean and the forest. Are there any culturally modified trees in the park, what portion of the tree was harvested and how well do the trees recover after bark or wood is taken? What food and medicine plants are in the park, and how have these been distributed by the Tsleil-Waututh cultural practises?
