Healthy oceans equal healthy lives; the two are inseparable. That’s the premise upon which World Oceans Day was originally proposed by the Canadian government at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Locally, to ensure that this vision is sustained, the Friends of Semiahmoo Bay Society and the City of Surrey hosted a celebration on that day (June 8) at Blackie Spit Park as the wrap-up to the 16th annual Environmental Extravaganza, which began back on Earth Day (April 20).

Colleen Gillespie, environmental programs coordinator with Surrey, told the Georgia Straight by phone that the Crescent Beach–based park, with its beach trails and picnic area, was an ideal fit with World Oceans Day’s festivities.

“Blackie Spit is a wonderful place to explore the marine environment,” she said, “especially for people who don’t recognize what lies beyond the water’s edge. That’s where the touch-tank exhibits come in. Members of the Friends of Semiahmoo Bay Society collect marine critters from the beach and then return the specimens to the waters afterwards.”

Society president Margaret Cuthbert told the Straight that the primary focus of the 500-member FSBS is on shorekeeping. “When we started in 2001, there already was a group of riparian stewards, or streamkeepers, operating locally to monitor the health of creeks and rivers, but very little attention was being paid to the marine environment.”

At the World Oceans Day event, the group formally launched its new Beach Hero Marine Interpretive Program, which Cuthbert said was developed with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. FSBS volunteers conducted recreational-use surveys, distributed informational brochures, observed and reported marine conditions with pier and beach patrols, and sponsored interpretive walks led by summer students.

When asked to evaluate the changes in the local ocean waters around the triad of Mud, Boundary, and Semiahmoo bays since she first became involved, Cuthbert said it was a difficult question to answer. “We survey to detect changes over time. There’s certainly more invasive Japanese eelgrass taking over from our native grasses. We believe the overharvesting of ghost shrimp for fish bait is causing the intertidal mud flats to compact, as the shrimp are no longer there to aerate the soil. This allows the introduced [Zostera] japonica to take off.”

Touch tanks are a delightful way to demystify the marine world, about which much remains unknown. One of the best collections is on display at the new permanent replacement Ucluelet Aquarium, near Long Beach on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

When the Straight dropped by in March, staff members were stocking 34 tanks and two large exhibit pools. Assistant curator Laura Griffith-Cochrane explained that the aquarium was unique in that the marine species—which were gathered locally in late winter by a team of divers led by marine biologist Philip Bruecker (whom she credited with founding the aquarium)—will be returned to nearby waters in October.

Some species, such as a juvenile giant Pacific octopus that had been caught in a lingcod trap by local fishers, would be released as soon as they outgrew the confines of the largest tanks. “At most aquariums, such as in Vancouver and Monterey [California], big species steal the show,” she said. “If you don’t have those things, people get a chance to admire smaller creatures.”

Griffith-Cochrane said the two features that set the dockside facility apart from others is that half the exhibits are in touch tanks. “As well, at least two staff members attend the touch tanks while constantly talking to our visitors. There are lots of demos for everyone to feel and smell marine life. Unlike a lot of aquariums that are more like museums, nothing here is hidden. We want people to feel like they are as close to an ocean experience as possible.”

B.C. environmental activist Eric Enno Tamm, author of Beyond the Outer Shores, about pioneering ocean ecologist Ed Ricketts, expounded on the correlation between healthy oceans and healthy lives to the Straight by phone from the Ottawa office of Ecotrust Canada. “Our planet is inappropriately called Earth when it should have been [called] Ocean. So many biological functions relate fundamentally to the ocean. Every other breath we draw depends on its oxygenation process. On a secondary level, the ocean provides us with some of the tastiest foods. The seafood industry is one of the last vestiges of hunter-gatherer culture. As such, we need to make sure we encourage fishing in a sustainable way. As humans, we need to be stewards. The Ucluelet Aquarium’s touch pools get tourists enthused about marine life. That’s important, especially as we know that this generation of kids is so disconnected from the environment.”

If anyone can hold children’s attention, it’s 28-year-old Griffith-Cochrane, whose communication talents include the ability to speak to youngsters rather than talking down to them, such as when describing how crabs give birth to thousands of young after nesting like hens on their eggs, or pointing out sea slugs as one of her favourite species: “When I saw this yellow one, I got really excited about studying oceanography.”

Such enthusiasm must surely influence children, who will inherit Planet Ocean for more than a day.

Access: Info on the Ucluelet Aquarium is at their website. The writer stayed as a guest of the Black Rock Oceanfront Resort in Ucluelet.