I wrote this blog for the Nature Nanaimo newsletter published July 10, 2022. This is a slightly modified version. Photo Neil McDaniel, https://blueocean.net/glass-sponge-reefs-living-fossils-found-off-canadian-coast/ An excellent article by Sheila Byers about the unique glass sponge reefs that occur in the Salish Sea and the Hecate Strait appeared in the spring 2022 of BC Nature Magazine, and...

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A blog about senses. Doesn’t that look good? It was a meal I ordered in Port Hardy a few years ago. It looked good, and it tasted good. To determine that, you would use four of your five senses. We mostly take our senses for granted as we grow up. Once in a while I have given some thought in passing about how much more difficult life would be if I lost my sight or…

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Photography used to be a rather hit and miss affair for several reasons. When I first started trying my hand at photography, skill requirements were light years more demanding than with today’s digital cameras. An average iPhone today takes better general photographs than many of the SLR’s I used as a teenager. Back then, the number of times I received developed photographs that were all under- or over-exposed, or out of focus is something I…

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In these Covid times, I get what little inspiration I can muster from reading books. I admire the skill of authors who dive deep into old documents to find information for their stories. Most of what I read is non-fiction, so the information I gain is either directly from quotes by someone from a letter or other written document, but more often a mix of quoted text and the author’s interpretation of what happened. Natural…

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Linnea borealis, the twin flower which Carolus Linnaeus named for himself, apparently. Reading is a good pastime during the isolation most of us experience due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Recently I have been reading books that grapple with evolution, the species concept, and the naming of species (I also have read about wolves and cougars, making me much more attentive when in the great outdoors). As a student, I always thought of a species as…

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A book review “There’s an important distinction between management of wildlife and management for wildlife” Paul Paquet I have long had a strong interest in wolves and consider myself fairly knowledgeable about them. I have read a lot about wolves, starting with L. David Mech’s “The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species”, which at the time (1970’s) was probably the definitive work on these fascinating animals. I also wrote a term paper…

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“In the last few years, a number of studies and books…. have suggested that luck and opportunity may play a far greater role than we ever realized, across a number of fields, including financial trading, business, sports, art, music, literature, and science.” Scott Barry KaufmannBy Joe Papp – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26473455 I recently read an article by Scott Barry Kaufmann discussing “The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than…

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Humans are by nature conservative in the sense that we are most comfortable when our environment is stable. Change is frequently viewed as negative. One type of environment that is of conservation concern to European naturalists is the cultural landscape, particularly small wood pastures with scattered or bordering deciduous brush or trees, which are no longer in use for animal husbandry or hay production. These types of habitats have high biodiversity conservation value (Kunttu et…

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Here is my second installment of books that I have enjoyed reading. Nature’s Argonaut: Daniel Solander 1733-1782 by Edward Duyker. Melbourne: Miegunyah Press. 1998. 400 pages. Daniel Solander was the de facto naturalist on Cook’s first voyage, although Joseph Banks, who financed the trip, tends to get the credit. Solander is little known largely because of his meagre (non-existant?) publication record, in spite of a large volume of work he did on New Zealand and…

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