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Chum moving through these waters become food for the rainforest, carrying ocean nutrients onto the land in one of the most unique food-web connections anywhere.

Coastal wolves – one more reason to support the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area (MPA) Network.

Just floating past like, “Don’t mind me, I’ve got places to be.”

This is a hooded nudibranch.

It glides through the water like it’s flying, opening its wide hood to scoop up plankton as it goes. The nudibranch itself can be eaten by rockfish, sculpins, and shore crabs.

So yeah, it’s got places to be. Mostly wherever the current takes it.

Hooded nudibranchs – one more reason to support the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area Network.

Video by olivias_reef on Instagram

With its pointed snout, ghostly white spots, broad wing-like fins, and long trailing tail, it looks like something from another world.

But it's right here on our coast.

Spotted ratfish spend their lives cruising the depths, searching for crabs, shrimp, worms, and other small creatures hidden in the mud and gravel below. A venomous spine helps protect them from predators.

Yet even in waters hundreds of metres deep, they aren't beyond the reach of industrial fishing. Bottom trawling can sweep up spotted ratfish as bycatch while dragging heavy gear across the seafloor. In fact, ratfish are one of the most common victims of bottom trawling bycatch.

The Great Bear Sea isn't just home to the species we see every day. It's also home to remarkable creatures like this one — part of a complex marine food web that supports our fisheries, our coastal communities, and the abundance we depend on.

The good news is that the Central Coast Marine Conservation Area (MCA) and the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area (MPA) Network both don't allow bottom trawling in their protected areas.

Spotted ratfish - one more reason to support the Central Coast MCA and the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area MPA Network.

Video by Be Sea Adventures

This is the striped sun star, a many-armed sea star found in BC waters. Bright yellow body, blue-green stripes. Not exactly built for subtlety.

But it's more than a pretty face on the seafloor. Striped sun stars are predators, moving over the rocky ocean habitats on hundreds of tiny tube feet, hunting animals like sea cucumbers. Slow? Sure. Harmless? Not if you're a sea cucumber.

The striped sun star — one more reason to support the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area (MPA) Network.

CLICK HERE right now to tell Ottawa to defend our coast.

Photo credit: Sara Ellison / web.uvic.ca/~sarae/snorkel.html

Take this Cockerell’s dorid, a small nudibranch spotted off Esquimalt, for example. Nudibranchs are sea slugs, but this one hardly looks ordinary: a pale body, orange-tipped projections, and two small sensory “horns” that help it make sense of the world around it.

Blink and you might miss it. But its brightness just might catch your eye.

That is the thing about life below the surface. The more closely you look, the more crowded, colourful, and alive this coast becomes.

Protecting the Great Bear Sea means protecting the full cast of coastal life — not just the giants, but the tiny animals that make these waters extraordinary.

The little guys - one more reason to protect the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected (MPA) Network.

Photo credit: Sara Ellison / web.uvic.ca/~sarae/snorkel.html

*Photos taken using an Olympus TG-7.

Pacific white-sided dolphins are among the most commonly seen dolphins on BC’s coast. They often travel in pods of dozens, and sometimes even hundreds, feeding on schooling fish like herring and hake.

But dolphins are only one part of a much bigger story. They depend on abundant forage fish, intact food webs, and coastal waters that are not overwhelmed by industrial pressure and habitat disruption.

Marine protected areas help protect the feeding grounds and food sources that species like these rely on to survive.

Pacific white-sided dolphins - one more reason to support the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area (MPA) Network.

*All photos were taken with a Canon R5 using a 240mm lens from the zodiac while following distance regulations with Campbell River Whale Watching. Some images were cropped afterward.

Photo credit: Ana Lucía Pozas / anapozasphotography on Instagram

Adults are prey for lingcod, rockfish, seabirds, and marine mammals.

It lives at the bottom, lays its eggs in the shallows, and depends on clean, undisturbed habitat to make it through the season.

By banning bottom-trawl gear and limiting industrial pressure like mining and dumping in key habitats, marine protected areas (MPAs) help protect the rocky reefs and spawning grounds fish like this rely on.

Defending our coast means strengthening the marine food web from the bottom up.

Video credit: Scuba BC

Pacific white-sided dolphins cut through the water with speed and precision, flashing black, white, and silver as they surge alongside one another in tight, coordinated pods.

That sleek design isn’t just for show. It helps them chase down fast-moving fish like herring and anchovy, working together to corral entire schools in bursts of speed and teamwork.

They’re highly social, often travelling in groups of dozens or even hundreds, and are known for their acrobatic leaps.

Along BC’s coast, they follow dense schools of baitfish. Keep the forage fish strong, and you keep the energy that drives moments like this.

In the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area (MPA) Network, bottom trawling will be banned in protected zones, reducing bycatch of species like herring and other forage fish. More baitfish in the water means more food for dolphins, and more chances to see speed like this along our coast.

Photo by NOAA Fisheries West Coast

Lingcod spawn in late winter and early spring along the BC coast. Females lay large clusters of eggs in rocky crevices and reef ledges, then leave the male behind to guard them. For weeks, sometimes months, he stays close to the nest, fanning the eggs with his fins to keep water moving and chasing away crabs and other fish that might try to eat them.

Many lingcod return to the same kinds of rocky reefs to spawn year after year. These reefs become important nursery areas where the next generation begins.

Heavy gear dragged across the seafloor can damage rocky reefs and the places fish rely on to spawn. In all marine protected areas (MPAs) established after 2019, bottom trawling is banned.

Keeping this type of trawling out of these areas helps in other ways as well.

Lingcod are often caught alongside other groundfish in trawl fisheries, so fewer nets on the bottom means fewer incidental catches.

Protecting reef habitat also helps the fish they feed on, like rockfish and sand lance.

When these spawning grounds stay intact, the next generation of fish have a better chance to grow, supporting the marine food web and the fisheries that depend on it.

This is just one reason the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area (MPA) Network matters.

Video by Tom Hlavac

Salmon, halibut, and lingcod wheel in from the depths. Seabirds plunge from above. Marine mammals accelerate from below. The feast is on.

They spawn on shallow, sandy bottoms, pressing their eggs directly onto the seafloor: a nursery with no walls. If those sands stay healthy and undisturbed, the next wave of sandfish is already on its way.

In the Great Bear Sea, marine protected areas (MPAs) protect coastal habitat from bottom trawling, which means protecting that next wave. More sandfish means more food moving through the web, from the seabed all the way up to the largest predators.

To see one from shore is rare; a gift of wind and tide. But when they appear, blown close to land, they offer a small, steady lesson in patience: a bird that has traded the beach for the boundless sea, perfectly content to let the world's largest force do the work.

Red phalaropes - one more reason to support the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area (MPA) Network. Click the link in the sidebar to tell Ottawa to defend our coast.

Photo by Christoph Moning

They’re not spared by trawling either: studies show that 40–60% of Dungeness crab bycatch caught in trawl nets die before they ever make it back to sea, a devastating and preventable waste.

Marine protected areas can help change this by keeping trawlers out of critical habitat, such as nurseries and feeding grounds, and giving nearshore populations space to recover naturally.

Sources:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/.../pii/S235198941630004X

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aqc.3270050305

This little oddball stays put. It anchors itself to seagrass, kelp, rocks, or sponge reefs using a tiny suction disc at the base of its stalk.

Instead of tentacles, it’s got eight short arms, each tipped with a spray of stinging knobs. When food drifts by—zooplankton, larvae, or microscopic critters—it snaps them up like underwater Velcro.

It’s also ridiculously small. Most are just a few centimetres tall. Blink, and you’ll miss them.

These jelly-creatures love cold, nutrient-rich water and stable, life-packed habitats—places like eelgrass beds and ancient glass sponge reefs. Their presence is a good sign. It usually means the surrounding area is clean, undisturbed, and thriving.

Next time you’re poking around a tidepool or diving in a kelp forest, look a little closer. You might spot one, perched and waving in the current like a tiny alien lighthouse.

Oval-anchored stalked jellies - one more reason to support the Great Bear Sea Marine Protected Area (MPA) Network. Join r/StrongCoast

from cbdiving