After reading a post over at Des orques dans la brume, I have been keeping an eye on the health of our newborn beluga calf at the Vancouver Aquarium. Qila, the mother, is a first-timer, which always increases the risks. When the calf got sick last week, everyone took a deep breath. Having now mostly recovered, the two-week-old cutie is playfully swimming around her tank; updates are posted here and the mother and calf can be watched live on the beluga cam. Cute!
But just as it is the case out in open sea, the life and death cycle endlessly perpetuates itself at the aquarium too. And despite what some people want to believe, sometimes the human factor isn't responsible. Animals, like us, just get sick and die. Period.
[Reproduced from my original blog, Coriolistic Anachronisms]
This is for Marie, who could not be present, but always is, any way.
There are times and places when - and where - one wishes the former would stop and the latter could be taken home. But time surely never stops and those places only follow us home on frozen photographs and wrapped up softly in our memories. It's up to us, then, to match our pace to that of life around us and to make sure the memories live on and generate new dreams.
The Seawall is one of those places, and last Sunday night, one of those times.
I had noticed on my afternoon run that Kent Avery, the singular man behind the famous balanced stones, was at work on his regular spot half-way between Ferguson Point and Second Beach, and I'd decided to come back for sunset.
Vancouver’s unique Tourism Challenge is now in its final few days. I have enough stamps already but will probably collect a few more along the way. Of course this year wasn’t the crazy race last year was, but the circumstances were different, too.
For those wondering what on Earth I’m talking about, the Tourism Challenge is an exceptional initiative of the Vancouver Attractions Group, Tourism Vancouver and the Vancouver Hotel General Managers Association. In its seventh year, the program aims at giving tourism industry workers an opportunity to familiarize themselves with our area’s fantastic attractions and hotels.
Did you ever wish you could visit the underwater world and explore the reef from the privileged point of view of its inhabitants?
Well you can. Take a few days off the beach on your next vacation and learn to dive. It’ll change the way you look at the ocean forever. And I know what I’m talking about.
Or there’s the next best thing: buy yourself a ticket to the new IMAX Deep Sea 3D movie and get ready to be amazed. Because you will be.
Oh, it had been done before; BBC’s Blue Planet enchanted us with first class underwater footage and MacGillivray Freeman’s The Living Sea and Coral Reef Adventure toyed with the IMAX format. But these were two-dimensional only. You were watching someone else’s vision, however beautiful, replayed in a flat approximation of the reality.
Deep Sea 3D takes you below the surface, places you behind the camera, a mask on your face, and then quietly backs away, leaving you on the reef surrounded by fish and coral. You ARE there. The only thing missing is water.
The experience is simply amazing. Many species of sharks swim right at you, giant Humboldt Squid dart across the darkest night, flashing furiously with the pleasure of the hunt, Manta Rays gracefully loop in front of you feeding on plancton, comical Green Turtles do a pit stop at a cleaning station and get their shells picked clean by a battalion of colorful fish, a bright red Rainbow Nudibranch dances like a ballerina in mid-water, jellyfish wage lethal wars against each other, coral spawns in an inverted snowfall, and they’re all so real and close you could touch them.
