Hacking away the berms.

Surfside RV Resort, Parksville BC (2 stars)

Lee watched during the course of the day as the excavator slowly removed the berms on the other side of channel. The objective is to restore the estuary to what it was before Surfside was built. As we were told, the opening to the channel is now so narrow and artificial that fish come in and cannot find their way back out. This is particularly troubling for salmon. So, open it up again and let if flood during high tide.

Lez notes: The cameras are clicking! The changes are being photographed and I hope to create a few 'before and after' photographs (through the magic of photo editing). This morning a fishing net style barrier was set up in the small channel of water that tide flows in and out of the long channel at the back of the Schooner at low tide. The excavator I'm calling 'Vator' crawled along the estuary berm and filled in the channel on our side of the net (north side) and made a small roadway for it to cross the channel to the eastern side of the land. The berm land on that far channel was scooped up and dumped along its shore, spreading into the water and lowering the height of the land.

Much to our surprise, the Black Tailed Deer that wandered over that way and apparently had to check out what Vator was doing. They were not frightened or bothered by all the action, but eventually wandered back past us heading for the forest area closer to our main office. Before they made it that far, they were running back to the section where Vator and crew were working. From there they wandered in closer to Shelly Park, and disappeared.

We quickly noticed why the deer had been running. Out from the forest area by the office came four deer! One had a nice full rack of antlers and the other had only one prong. They graciously posed for photos and eventually wandered back to their forest.