Vancouver Island is home to an amazing volume of flora and fauna. Although we are well known for our large marine mammals (orca whales etc.) and diverse eco-systems, some of the more common attributes of the region can often go overlooked. You know, the little animals, trees and things that get taken for granted because of their great numbers. We have dedicated this page to those plants and animals as a way of saying thanks for being there....

Ochre Starfish
Its average radius in the BC is seven and a half inches. Its arms are stout, tapering, and vary in number from four to seven (usually five). The body is covered with many small white spines arranged in detached groups or in a pattern, generally forming a star-shaped design on the central part of the disk. The ochre starfish can be colored yellow or pale orange to dark brown or deep purple. Feeding mainly on mussels, a hungry ochre starfish may resort to barnacles

and other species, such as snails, limpets and chitons. An ochre starfish can pry open smaller mussels, but on tougher prey the starfish inserts its stomach into snail shells, or through very narrow slits to eat its prey. Adult ochre starfish appear to have few enemies, but some are eaten by sea otters and sea gulls.

Harbour Seals
The colour and pattern of the harbour seal coat may vary between regions and even between individuals in a populations.  Most conspicuous are the spots, rings and blotches, which are generally more numerous on the back than on the belly.  Males range from 1.4-1.9 m, and weigh from 70-130 kg; females are slightly smaller.  Harbour seals are often found alone or in small groups at sea, but are gregarious at haul-out sites.  Females reach sexual maturity at

approximately 3-5 years of age, males between 5 and 6.  A single pup is born each year, from January to October, depending on location.  Mating takes place after the pups are weaned at about 4 weeks.  Harbour seals are opportunistic feeders and their diet varies with season, location, and prey availability.

Acorn Barnacle
Acorn barnacles, related to shrimp, hide their identity in snail-like shells. But they begin life as free swimming larvae. When the time comes to settle, the larvae “glue” their heads to hard surfaces, such as pilings, wharfs, ships, rocks or other hard-shelled animals. Once attached, they change into juvenile barnacles, minatures of the adults. Then each builds its own fortress—a cone-shaped limestone shell with a trap door in the ceiling. When water covers a barnacle,

the trap door opens, and the barnacle’s feathery legs emerge to sweep the water for plankton and detritus. When the tide is out, barnacles close their trap doors to conserve moisture. Barnacles spend the rest of their lives in this position—head down and feet up.

Arbutus Tree
Arbutus trees have the ability to survive the harshest climates close to the sea: wet and windy with snow in the winter and dry parched in the hot coastal summers of the Pacific Northwest. They can grow on bluffs where there is very little soil and survive droughts in several ways. One is by creating burls that store water for release when needed. In fact, burls can grow not only on the base of the tree near the ground but higher up the tree as well! They also survive the worst of droughts by letting a branch or part of a branch slowly die off or even a portion of the main trunk so that the tree can live. That way they can survive when all others would die. You can see these dead

branches on many trees. Arbutus is also known as madrone. Arbutus is the only deciduous tree that does not loose its leaves in the winter! It is an evergreen without needles, as are the evergreen trees like pines and spruces.
In the early spring they form bountiful white blossoms, unless it is surviving a harsh previous summer’s dry spell. In the fall clusters of orange red berries feed the birds and deer. In the summer, the reddish brown bark sheds its skin just like a snake! Another fascinating characteristic of the tree that helps it survive is that it can rejuvenate and regrow even after being cut down! New shoots sprout up from the base fed from the rich burl.

Pelagic Comorants
The Pelagic Cormorant, the smallest and most widely distributed of six cormorant species It is among the least gregarious or social of the cormorants, nesting on steep cliffs along rocky and exposed shorelines, either in loose colonies or far from nearest neighbors. Although the Pelagic Cormorant is exclusively marine in habits, its name is misleading, since it prefers inshore areas. This species feeds primarily on solitary fish and inverebrates on the bottom. The North American population totals about 130,000 birds. The species is also conspicuous on diurnal roosts, where it may spend considerable time drying its plumage. Like all other cormorants, it is sensitive to disturbance at colonies and vulnerable to oil spills, gill-net entanglement, and contamination of marine food webs.