BUDS, BIRDS, BLUE WHALES, and BLOOMIN’ URCHINS
- Jul 22
- 9 min read
Updated: Aug 28
What Victoria lacks in cultural or economic might she makes up for in geography, climate, flora, and fauna. If you’re from Victoria, or really anywhere on the coast in BC, it’s easy to forget (or never actually understand) how staggeringly beautiful it is here. Unless you leave, it would be easy to go your whole life thinking this is the world, not realizing how lush and vibrant this place is or just how brown or grey much of the continent and planet is for much of the year or even all-year-round.
That said, though Victoria is relatively verdant (with vehicles parked too long acquiring a whole ecosystem of lichens and mosses) it is also one of the driest cities in these parts. According to the Köppen climate classification system, Victoria is considered “Mediterranean-like”, meaning that the climate more closely approximates northwestern Spain and Portugal or northern California. Victoria is quite unlike so much of the Pacific Northwest and nothing at all like the boreal forest ecosystem that covers most of Canada. Victoria is significantly less wet than places like Mexico City or Chicago, and nothing at all like North America's wettest cities, such as Miami or neighbouring Vancouver and Seattle. With roadway medians and front yards commonly containing palm and fig trees, and averaging around 600mm of rain per year, Victoria most closely resembles San Francisco. To be honest, it’s so dry here that, as a transplant from Vancouver, I actually find myself missing the rain. That said, Victoria is actually wetter today than in the past. Like nearly all of the rest of British Columbia, the city and region has seen a significant increase in precipitation, between 10 and 20 percent over the last hundred years; and most climate predictions I’ve seen anticipate this place getting warmer and wetter over the coming century.
All of that nice weather means great blooms. If you’ve heard anything about Victoria it is likely her flowers. Best of all are the crocuses and cherry blossoms that pop up in mid-February. Anyone worth their organic, locally sourced, fair trade salt makes full use of this reality as best as they’re able. That typically includes sending flower pictures to family, friends, acquaintances, complete strangers, and arch-nemeses alike, really to anyone living anywhere else in the country, especially those east of the Rockies and in select northern and desert states, many of whom are likely to be, somehow, enduring their seventh month of ice and snow. Oh, and, no, this never gets old. Look, it’s what we’ve got.
Of course this place doesn’t just have early and abundant flowers. Anywhere you go in the area you’re likely to be near water, given the fjord-like geography of the region. And as busy as they seem, many of the waterways in and around Victoria comprise migratory bird sanctuaries. Established over a century ago, these sanctuaries cover 1,840 hectares of marine and estuarine waters, including Portage Inlet, the Gorge, Victoria Harbour, as well as the coastal waters of the Salish Sea from Macaulay Point to Ogden Point, around Clover Point and Oak Bay to Ten Mile Point. These sanctuaries also cover the Trial Islands and contain provincial ecological reserves and a rockfish conservation area. The diverse habitats therein include shallow and fast-moving tidal waters, eelgrass meadows, surfgrass, and kelp forests, fish and krill nurseries, shellfish beds, mud flats, tidal marshes, estuaries, sand and pebble beaches, rocky shorelines, as well as several islands home to maritime meadows and dwarf Garry oaks. It’s pretty great. I don’t really have to get into birds here because folks who care about birds are many and tend to be really bonkers for birds. You know who you are. Keep at it. Aside from birds, these places form critical habitat for many rare and endangered species within the Garry oak associated ecosystems — such as Macoun’s meadowfoam (Limnanthes macounii) and Victoria’s Owl-clover (Castilleja victoriae) but also Northern abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana), Olympia oyster (Ostrea lurida), as well as the Southern resident orca (a local population of Orcinus orca, or as I prefer to call them: giant sadistic murder-dolphins).
On that thought, like everywhere else lucky enough to be situated on the Salish Sea, Victoria has seen a remarkable swell in marine mammal populations over the last decade. Myself, despite having gone back and forth many times over 40 years, I’d never seen any whales, dolphins, or porpoises on any of my travels between the island and the mainland. And I was looking! However, in the last couple of years, I’ve been delighted to spot one or more: humpbacks (Megaptera novaeangliae), grey whales (Eschrichtius robustus), Dall’s porpoises (Phocoenoides dalli), Pacific white-sided dolphins (Lagenorhynchus obliquidens), or killer whales (aka [only to me] Gi’Sa’Mu’Do’) on every trip. And I’m told minke (Balaenoptera acutorostrata), fin (Balaenoptera physalus), and blue (Balaenoptera musculus) whales are also out there in larger numbers. This really drives home what an incredibly diminished experience was had throughout most of the 20th and early 21st centuries.
Joining these cetaceans are pinnipeds, like California and Steller sea lions (Zalophus californianus and Eumetopias jubatus), who have seen their breeding populations explode over the last 50 years. According to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, counts of Eumetopias pups in the waters off of Vancouver Island have jumped from fewer than 1,000 in the early 1970s to around 7,000 today. And the total adult population has grown from fewer than 5,000 to above 25,000 during that same period. Relatedly, and despite some difficult years, several major salmon-bearing rivers and streams here on the island and nearby on the mainland have been enjoying record salmon returns. As it turns out, all you have to do is stop catching and killing all the whales, scooping up all the fish, and dumping sewage straight into the sea and life is pretty happy to return — and remarkably fast, too.
I’m obliged by personal preference and my education not to devote too much space here to those most charismatic of megafauna and highlight instead the much smaller, less splashy and social of our neighbours. We could get into the nudibranchs, of which there are many cool ones you can find in tide pools close to downtown Victoria or on the eelgrass up the Gorge. (If nothing else you may spot the almost spiralling flower-like egg clusters they like to deposit on the eelgrass easily seen from the walkways north of Tilicum Road bridge). Or there’s my personal favourite, the Pacific spiny lumpsucker (Eumicrotremus orbis), which you probably have to snorkel or scuba or visit the aquarium in Sidney to see, but you should seek them out in person if you’ve never seen them. The name really says it. Imagine an armoured mutant grape with googly eyes that has on its belly a little suction cup and also modified front-facing fins it uses less as swimmers and more as feet to shuffle along with… So great. But what really needs a mention are those other quiet, lumpy, slow-moving friends.
What you’re unlikely to see out at the oceanside here are loads of sea stars. So very abundant up until the catastrophic (and, frankly, nightmarish) Sea Star Wasting Disease epidemic of 2013. Just now, after more than a decade of research, scientists have finally determined the real cause. The responsible agent was a bacteria called Vibrio pectinicida. Ravaging much of the Pacific coast, at least 20 species of sea stars were impacted. The species hardest hit were sunflower stars (Pycnopodia helianthoides), sun stars (Solaster spp.) and purple sea stars (Pisaster ochraceus), with declines estimated to be above 90% for each of them. The most noticeable impact for the majority of us landlubbers has been the absence of the once hyperabundant, five-rayed Pisaster, who could have been reliably spotted in great numbers, in matted clusters on any rocky shoreline or scavenging the uprights of almost any wharf. To get a sense for what it was previously like, you can find several of the city's electrical boxes, those occupying the sidewalks every few blocks downtown, wrapped in a photo of a section of intertidal zone with a cluster of purple Pisasters. There were clusters of them everywhere just like that. They were totally ubiquitous and are nearly no-more.
Tragic as that appears, a major side effect of this severe reduction in the Pisaster population (one of the most voracious predators around and the first ever organism designated as a keystone species), has been the population explosions of their prey: the local urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) and mussels (Mytilus californianus). Though the urchin boom has been tough on the kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana) forests they love feeding on, their abundance has been great for the long-struggling sea otter (Enhydra lutris) populations all up and down the Pacific coast. Like cetaceans and pinnipeds, Enhydra numbers have shot up from near-extinction, due to centuries of industrial scale over-harvesting similar to whales and salmon. In my lifetime sea otters went from small, isolated communities totalling a several hundred to around 1,500 in the mid ‘90s and a minimum population estimate of approximately 8,000 today, found all along the northwest coast and northern tip of Vancouver Island and up through the central coast of the province. At any rate, you can indeed find these purple predators here and there and I imagine they’ll be back in greater numbers in due time.
The sea star you are very unlikely to find is Pychnopodia. Not only are you unlikely to find them due to their preference for residing below 400m but also because they just aren’t there. They, more than any other sea star, were almost, quite nearly as can be, rendered extinct through this outbreak of illness. I worry about these folks a lot. In 2021, a collaborative undertaking between some sixty partners throughout the impacted region and published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. revealed the sorry state of Pychnopodia. Their investigations found the sunflower sea star now appears to be functionally extinct (with a population decline of more than 99%) between Baja California and the northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, just across the water from Victoria. They also revealed declines nearly as severe, almost 90%, occurring between the Salish Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. The survey concluded there was "no evidence of population recovery in the years since the outbreak" and that natural recovery in the southern half of their range was "unlikely over the short term." This means the species is now IUCN-listed as critically endangered. That said, on a positive note, not only are there surviving populations of sunflowers in Alaska but they have also been discovered thriving in a natural sanctuary off the central coast of BC. As a result, while further study into the causes and a cure for Sea Star Wasting Disease remains ongoing, a tremendous recovery effort is also underway, with active breeding and relocation activities. So, with any luck, devoted communities should be able to bring back the sunflower sea star just as we have so many other nearly extinct species before them, like the grey wolf (Canis lupus), plains bison (Bison bison bison), and bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus). All of this is to say that if you see any sea stars on your visit it probably wouldn’t hurt to wish them well. I don’t know, maybe blow them a kiss or something. Tell them Norman sent you.
Hooded nudibranch and friend
SOURCES
Government of Canada, 2015 - Multi-species recovery strategy for Garry Oaks ecosystems
Nature Conservancy of Canada, 2025 - Garry Oak
Environment and Climate Change Canada, 2017 - Recovery Strategy for the Victoria’s Owl-clover (Castilleja victoriae) in Canada
Parks Canada, 2022 - Olympia Oyster (Ostrea lurida)
Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, 2009 - Northern Abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana)
Fisheries and Oceans Canada, 2020 - Protecting British Columbia’s Northern Abalone
Peregrine Pulp, 2023 - Giant Sadistic Murder-Dolphins
Digital Museums Canada, 2025 - From Tides to Tins: Salmon Canning in BC
CBC, 2021 - Record 21 humpback calves spotted in Salish Sea over feeding season as whale numbers rebound
Global News, 2022 - ‘Best season in my lifetime’: B.C. salmon returns strong, Indigenous fisherman says
City News, 2022 - Large numbers of Pacific white-sided dolphins return to BC
Capital Daily, 2022 - Humpback comeback: Record number of humpback whales spotted in Salish Sea this year
Pacific Whale Watch Association, 2023 - 2022 Was Record Year for Bigg’s Killer Whales, Humpback Whales, and Protective Sentinel Actions
Fisheries and Oceans Canada, 2024 - Abundance and Distribution of Steller Sea Lions (Eumetopias jubatus)
in British Columbia
Peregrine Pulp, 2025 - Record Returns
Marine Detective, 2016 - Seaslugs / Nudibranchs
Gorge Waterway Action Society, 2020 - Eelgrass Survey
Rickipedia, 2020 - Pacific Spiny Lumpsucker
Shaw Centre for the Salish Sea, 2016 - Aquarium
CBC, 2025 - After a decade of death, Canadian scientists say they've found the sea star killer
National Geographic, 2025 - Role of Keystone Species in an Ecosystem
Science Advances, 2025 - Keystone interdependence: Sea otter responses to a prey surplus following the collapse of a rocky intertidal predator
Fisheries and Oceans Canada, 2020 - Trends in growth of the sea otter (Enhydra lutris) population in British Columbia 1977 to 2017
Maclean’s Magazine, 2020 - Sea otters are back with a worrying vengeance in BC
Peregrine Pulp, 2021 - Species [not] at Risk
