Diario del proyecto False Creek Bioblitz 2022

Thank you for your contribution(s) to the False Creek BioBlitz! I am excited to report that we have surpassed 1000 observations in our project.

I was thrilled to visit, along with our project scientific lead Dr. Matt Whalen, the most northern boundary of our project last week (the eastern side of Second Beach) at the July low tide event. We were joined by 3 Great Blue Herons, several Canada Geese and a few Crows as we moved along the waterline. I was surprised by how many ribbon worms and small polychaete worms we found - and pleased to find many healthy looking Ochre Stars.

We continue to plan and prepare ahead towards an exciting Labour Day long weekend when we bring together marine and terrestrial scientists to do sediment and plankton sampling, and pull up the recently deployed settlement plates in False Creek. More information coming soon!

-Kate
False Creek BioBlitz Steering Committee

To find out more about the False Creek BioBlitz please head to False Creek BioBlitz 2022

One component of the overall False Creek BioBlitz project, occurring over the summer of 2022, is the Hakai Institute’s Sentinels of Change Initiative. This is a collaborative community science project investigating the dynamics and patterns of invertebrate recruitment and biodiversity and how they are changing in the Salish Sea. False Creek Friends Society took on this role locally by adopting a light trap (the device used to attract and collect larval invertebrates and fish), installing the trap at Heather Civic Marina and recruiting and training volunteers to monitor the trap and record observations, with assistance from Hakai scientists.

Nina, a ‘False Creek Light Trapper’ wrote about her experience:

I usually check the trap at Heather Marina with my family and other volunteers, but this Friday the day got hectic and it ended up being just me there on my own. I had checked the trap enough times that I felt pretty confident that I could do it.

I pulled the trap out of the water slowly and maneuvered it onto the dock. When I first emptied the trap into the bin I noticed just one pipe fish and another small fish. It looked like another standard catch. I rinsed out the trap with some more seawater and poured that into the bin too.

That’s when something caught my eye, something that looked different from all the other times I had checked the trap.

Find out what Nina observed in the light trap: READ MORE