Next on Jonathan Bird's Blue World,
Jonathan is investigating a mean-looking fish!
Hi, I'm Jonathan Bird and welcome to my world!
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One of my favorite places to dive is Eastport, Maine. The water is cold, but the bottom is
covered in an incredible amount of colorful marine life.
Eastport is near the Canadian border, at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy.
The huge tidal range in Eastport means that the water is almost always flowing one way
or the other as the tide comes in or goes out. The moving water full of plankton feeds
a ton of invertebrates, making the bottom lush.
It gives me plenty of things to film on every dive.
There is pink soft coral feeding on the plankton.
Anemones cling to everything, even an old drain pipe.
The lobsters reach epic proportions!
And fish thrive, like this camouflaged Sea Raven, blending in with the bottom.
A shrimp rests on a sponge.
And a whelk, a kind of large snail, searches for a meal.
Unfortunately, the whelk is about to become dinner for my favorite animal, the Atlantic
Wolffish.
Wolffish might have big teeth, but these fish are no threat to people. They like to eat
whelks and crabs.
Wolffish often get together in pairs during the summer to lay their eggs. They hang out
in the same den under a rock.
After the female lays around 10,000 eggs, the male kicks her out and guards the eggs
for several months until they hatch. Here you can see the egg mass behind the male,
way inside his den.
Over the years I have become friendly with a wolffish I call Gene. He can't resist
a whelk or two when I bring them right to his front door. It took me a couple of years
to get him comfortable enough with me to come all the way out of his den. Even then, he's
pretty skittish.
I've heard about Pacific wolffish that are bigger and friendlier, and I want to go meet
them, so I'll have to travel from Maine, all the way to British Columbia.
My journey takes me from Eastport to Vancouver.
Next I have to drive out to Port Hardy, where my dive boat awaits.
Well, four hours to Port Hardy on the beautiful roads of Vancouver Island.
In the drizzling rain, I board the Mamro, my dive boat for the week.
Soon, under a clearing sky, we're underway. Captain Dan drives the boat past gorgeous
forest wilderness, on our way to Clam Cove, where we will anchor the boat for a few days
in search of Pacific Wolfeels.
Pacific wolfeel is the local name for this impressive fish. But it's not an eel at
all. It's actually a fish, just like the Atlantic wolffish, so should be called a Pacific
wolf fish.
Whatever you want to call it, I am going to find one. We depart aboard the skiff for our
first dive.
I start suiting up in anticipation. The water is 45 degrees, but my drysuit will keep me
warm.
And now I'm ready! Voila! Ready to dive...the cold Pacific Northwest.
My cold water dive gear is bulky and cumbersome, but I'm used to it.
Lets go check it out!
Descending through the kelp, I find a world as rich in marine life as Eastport, driven
by similar tidal action and nutrients.
I swim over the edge of the wall, to search for a Pacific Wolfeel.
There! Sticking just its head out from its den, a fully-grown male Wolfeel stares at
my camera.
Nearby, a younger one, with darker coloration, also curious what I'm up to, but not about
to come out.
Both have prominent teeth, just like the Atlantic Wolffish, but they appear just as docile.
Soon, I turn back to observe the big male, and he starts coming right at me! He's coming
out of his den. He's a lot longer than an Atlantic Wolffish.
I'm not sure what he's up to.
He comes up to closely investigate my lens. Maybe he sees his reflection.
He lets me hold him in my hand. They told me the Pacific ones were friendly, but this
is incredible! I'm beginning to think maybe this fish has been fed quite a bit, and he's
looking for a handout. But I didn't bring him any food!
He tries my arm to see how it tastes, but dry suits apparently aren't very good eating.
Before long, he gets the idea that I haven't got anything to eat, so he goes over to see
my dive buddy Tim, who just happens to have brought a snack.
Now I would have bet that there is no way a Wolfeel would eat a sausage. But as it turns
out, they love sausages. Who'da thunk?
After he got his snack, the wolfeel heads back to his den, and then I could see why
they call them wolfeels. This fish has a body 6 feet long and it's more eel-like than
fish.
So why do we call the Atlantic ones fish and the Pacific ones eels? Good question, but
they are both fish, and probably one of the most interesting fish to interact with in
the entire world. No matter what you call them, they're cool!
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