Author Tags: Advice Outdoors


Articles: 4 Articles for this author

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As Roderick Haig Brown once observed, in a province with 40 major ranges, "The first almighty fact about British Columbia is mountains.";
With Christmas sales mostly below expectations, Over Beautiful British Columbia (Beautiful B.C./ARTery $49.95) literally rose above the rest to provide a bestselling bird's eye view of B.C.
Released in October, the 192 page overview of B.C. reportedly sold 30,000 copies before Christmas with the marketing support of Overwaitea/Save On Foods, underwriters of the project.
"Because of my graphic art background I always look for very simple elements in photographs,"; says photo editor Tony Owen. But the spectacular images weren't always simple to obtain, given B.C.'s topography. As well, the selection process for 200 aerial photos from 20 photographers entailed sifting through a veritable mountain of images.
"We invited more than 50 photographers to submit and we received 6,000 images from 35 of them,"; says Owen. "Even with all those we still sent photographers into key areas for more.";
Having pictured the province since 1959, Beautiful B.C. magazine was a logical partner for KCTS 9 to produce a 60 minute video Over Beautiful British Columbia: An Aerial Adventure, marking B.C.'s 125th anniversary as a province. Washington state's public broadcasting station had previously made ten 'Over' programs including Over Washington to mark the state's 200th birthday in 1989.
For the book's accompanying video, for sale at $24.95, a $300,000 camera was bolted under a helicopter's nose, operated by remote control.
Written and edited by Bruce Obee, with Russ Heinl as principal photographer, the Over project was the largest publishing venture in the magazine's 37 year history.
Lieutenant Governor Garde Gardom will present a copy of the book to Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace this spring.

[BCBW 1997]

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National projects that get launched from the West Coast are as rare as one-legged runners.

With a one-hour CTV special and sponsorship from Royal Bank, Over Canada: An Aerial Adventure (Beautiful British Columbia/Whitecap $49.95) is a marketing gamble, a Left Coastal overview that uses a helicopter to bring the country together.

Culled from thousands of aerial photos, Over Canada celebrates the rugged diversity of the world's second-largest nation with the simple slogan 'there's no place like home.'

Lead photographer Russ Heinl, editor Bryan McGill and writers Rosemary Neering and Bruce Obee have dispensed with ten provinces and two territories in favour of six regions-Atlantic Canada, St. Lawrence/Great Lakes, the Canadian Shield, the Prairies, the North and the West-in French and English editions.

Two-thirds of Canada's 5.4 million residents 100 years ago lived in rural areas; today three-quarters of the 30.3 million residents live in cities and towns. One-third of our population lives in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Seventy percent of the country is still wilderness.

With Constance Brissenden, Russ Heinl has simultaneously published a then-and-now aerial comparison, Vancouver and the Lower Mainland from the Air (Whitecap $34.95), as well as Vancouver Island from the Air (Whitecap $34.95) with Rosemary Neering.

Canada 0-920431-87-9
Vancouver 1-55110-958-1
Vancouver Island 1-55110-957-3

[BCBW WINTER 1999]

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As RECENTLY AS 1972 WHALES WERE killed and dissected for scientific research.
Modern scientists have discredited that method and devised more humane and conservation-oriented techniques such as "photo-identification", photographing the unique markings on the animals and then tracking the movements of individual whales. The people involved in full-time study of whales in the wild are portrayed in Brnce Obee and Graeme Ellis' Guardians of the Whales: The Quest to Study Whales in the Wild (Whitecap $34.95). Ellis, who supplied most of the photographs, has been studying killer whales "longer than anybody" since the late 1960s. The book tells the story of these fascinating animals through the eyes of people who have spent half their lives on the high seas studying them," says Obee. It's not known whether all this watching and listening by humans is affecting the animals. Obee says it may be too soon to tell. "They may live up to 80 years, and we've only studied them in the wild for 20.You can't determine what's normal in that short time. The major prob1em could be noise pollution, since killer whales use echo-location to navigate. "Put a hydrophone down in Johnson Strait and you always hear the kathump of diesels, even if the boat is seven kilometres away."
Sometimes a grey or humpback whale will observe the observers. It has happened in the whale breeding grounds off Baja California, and on rare occasions off the B.C. coast.

The first recorded incident of the "friendly whale phenomenon" was in the early' '80s off Meares Island, when a whale came up and bumped a research boat Luckily the researcher had seen the same behaviour down south and knew there was no danger. He tried to keep the incident quiet for the whale's sake. ";In spite of that the Vancouver Sun found out and ran a front page story," says Obee, 'and soon people were up there jumping on the whale's back, putting dogs on it, even driving their boats over it." Most whale watchers, however pose little threat and Obee would prefer to see more commercial whale watching. "If you've got 5O people in one boat, that's a whole lot better than 50 people in 25 boats." He says Obee thinks that with the growth in whale watching and the general increase in public knowledge about the mammals, the time has come to release all whales from captivity. "Some people from the Aquarium will argue that if we don't let people see these animals in the flesh, we'll return to the days when people shot them, You can't' convince me. My children, who have never seen a blue whale, understand the need to protect them." About half of Obee's book deals with killer whales. "Before killer whale research began, people used to think there were thousands of Killer whales on the coast," Obee says. "and then they found there were only 330 along the coasts of B.C. and Washington." After that discovery no more killer whales were captured for display in aquariums, except to replace those that died in captivity. In recent year's killer whale research has focused on the sounds they make, and whether they "speak". Obee says that experts like John Ford of the Vancouver Aquarium have identified 40 "phrases" recorded by hydrophone. "If a killer wha1e pod comes into a narrow restricted passage," says Obee, it's quite common to hear them use a phrase frequently heard in that situation." They also make a great deal of vocalization when rubbing themselves on beaches, or when several pods meet. No one has discovered what the sounds mean. Ford refers to the sounds each whale makes when several pods meet as a "family badge" a way of keeping in touch with other members of the same pod while mingling with up to 100 other whales. Whale researchers used to think that humpback whales travelled straight from their breeding areas off Hawaii or Mexico to northern feeding grounds, and then back. Now modem methods of tracking whales have shown that they wander from Japan to Mexico, and from the Bering Sea to the South Pacific. The entire Pacific Ocean is the 12-meter giant's back yard. 1-55110-034-7

[BCBW, Autumn, 1992] "Environment"

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The number of grey whales is up from 11,000 to 21,000. Humpbacks have increased five-fold to 5,000 since hunting of them was outlawed. About 20,000 eagles now soar above the coasts of B.C., the highest number since DDT killed off great numbers of them. And there are more success stories on the environmental front, says journalist Bruce Obee.

SOMETIMES GROUPS NOT GENERALLY associated with conserving wildlife are active environmentalists. Bruce Obee points out in his book, Coastal Wildlife of British Columbia (Whitecap $39.95), the major role of hunters in protecting and enhancing waterfowl habitat since the turn of the century. "Ducks Unlimited [a hunter-sponsored organization] builds dikes, rearranges watercourses and does all kinds of things to enhance nestability for waterfowl," he says. Obee has written about wildlife and the environment for 20 years for publications such as Canadian Geographic and the New York Times. His latest book is illustrated by nature photographer Tim Fitzharris, whose photographs regularly appear in Audubon and National Geographic. Obee says his collaboration with Fitzharris is an attempt to redefine the 'coffee table book'. "I hate that term. I object to picture books with no text. This book has 40,000 words of text, all well researched and checked by experts." Obee traces today's concerns about wildlife back to the historic mistakes made by people, such as over-hunting marine mammals and poisoning their environment. "What we did in the past almost brought about their demise," says Obee, referring particularly to whales and seals, "and in the course of research I've discovered lots of little conservation programs that very few hear about." Not all the news is good, of course. Stellar Sea Lion and fur seal populations appear to be dropping, possibly because overfishing depletes their food stocks. And snow geese, who nest in Siberia but migrate over Canada and the U.S., "are down significantly from a few years ago." Birds like the snow goose rely on swampy areas such as the mouth of the Fraser River as a stopping off and feeding area on long flights. But Obee says the birds are being crowded out. "In the Fraser estuary the usable habitat has been reduced by 75 per cent from what it originally was." Conservation groups and governments have responded by formulating a North American Waterfowl Management Plan. The goal is to coordinate efforts across two continents to protect habitat for the birds. "For example," says Obee, "they're looking for ways to work with farmers to restore lost habitat and protect habitat that remain, perhaps by planting crops which the geese could eat in winter." Obee's next book, Guardians of the Whales (due in Fall '92) will focus on the people who study whales. He says there are large numbers of researchers right from Baja California up to Alaska, and that a high percentage study killer whales. "People my age, about 40, have been studying these mammals half their lives and understand them intimately." Researchers tell him that one of the greatest threats to the whales is noise
the collective noise of all marine traffic, from little motorboats to 60,000 tonne freighters.
1-895099-86-2

ANOTHER STRANGE BEDFELLOW ON THE conservation scene is MacMillan Bloedel. The giant forest company has co-sponsored the publication of a new guide book, Waterbirds of the Strait of Georgia (Soules $7.95). The strait is one of the few critical areas in the world for waterbirds. Three-quarters of B.C.'s human population lives around its shores, and "over 130 species of marine birds from 22 countries and three continents breed, migrate and/ or spend the winter in the Strait of Georgia", say the authors. The glossy, full colour guide to 48 common waterbirds will help raise money for the B.C. Waterfowl Society to preserve habitat for wildlife. 0-9695350-0-7

[BCBW 1991] "Environment";