Ocean Orca
This buoy was found by Ocean Adventures Charters on their beach clean-up initiative in the summer of 2021. It was found in the Normancell Islands on the central coast and it was likely used in the commercial or recreational Dungeness crab fishery.
On this piece I have painted a humpback whale and a school of Pacific herring swimming through a bull kelp forest, along the bottom are plumose anemones, crimson anemones, Pacific blood stars, purple ochre sea stars and green anemones. Humpback whales were once rare on the Pacific coast due to intensive whaling practiced during the early 1900’s. By 1960 the last commercial whaling station on the BC coast had shut down and with the international moratorium on commercial whaling signed in 1982 humpback populations have been making a slow recovery and are now returning in great numbers to the West Coast of Canada. It is now common to see these amazing up and down our coast, blowing great breaths into the air and feasting on the rich marine life in the area. It is magical indeed to watch these mammoth marine mammals silhouetted in the sunset as they cruise along.