My job this morning is to provide a “kayak clinic” for beginning kayakers out in the bay. I demonstrate paddling techniques, bracing, how to turn around, get the rudder up and down among other pointers.

“We could try the ‘Eskimo Roll’ if you’d like?”, I asked jokingly. The temperature of the waters here are in the high 40’s to low 50’s Fahrenheit, or about 10 degrees Celsius. If we were to practice rolling and submerging, we’d want to don dry suits.

Highlights along the shoreline include a Sitka black-tailed deer (doe with fawns) browsing on grasses above the beach wrack or strand zone, bald eagles at their nest, breaching salmon and best of all: Sunshine!

On our way back to the ship, I recruit other kayakers to help find macro-algaes, in particular the bull kelp. The pneumatocyst or air float can mimic the head of an otter, especially when there is a wind chop or swell on the sea surface. We find some un-attached Nereocystis leutkeana floating with its holdfast attached to a tiny rock. We haul it aboard and put it in a bucket for further examination later today.

In the afternoon I lead a less intense version of a forest walk that doesn’t include 367 steps up a steep hill to a cave.

After my introduction explaining safety in bear country, I address my group of intrepid travellers with the theme for the day, one that has been a favorite of mine over the four decades that I’ve been leading interpretive walks:

“Folks, instead of hiking, we will saunter—serendipitously--along these Forest Service roads. Horace Walpole, a British writer in the mid-1700’s, wrote a fairy tale called the ‘Three Princes of Serendip’. They had a knack for the unexpected, for discovering things that they had no idea they’d find. So let’s use all of our senses and see what we might come across over the next 90-minutes.”

Our finds included the stinky raceme of the skunk cabbage, scatological findings from several mammals, squirrel pine cone middens, flowers, mushrooms and various birds that I identified “by ear”, amongst other delightful finds.

Back aboard, I give a talk entitled “The Multifarious Uses of Nereocystis leutkeana”, a demonstration of the marvelous seaweed called the “bull kelp”. There are a lot of histrionics involved, including audience participation and hand-held specimens.

Here’s a few of the highlights: • Bull Kelp is an annual that can grow to 20 meters • The range of this nearshore brown algae is from central California to Alaska • The decimation of the (urchin-eating) Sea Otter by the Russians led to an increase in the herbivorous (kelp-loving) sea urchins and a subsequent decrease in kelp and what the kelp forest harbors, including many dozens of invertebrates and fishes • Native American uses include food and medicine, and recreational uses including ceremonial speaking tube, musical instruments, siphoning hose, jump rope, lion tamer, target practice, etc.

I entertain folks by using a knife to cut the kelp specimens and volunteers entertain everyone by using the hollow stipe as a trumpet-like horn, bugling the announcement for dinner!