Ian Lindsay & Associates: Ian Lindsay of Lindsay and Associates has played an active role in the local community since 1979. He has been with RE/MAX, Vancouver Island’s most advanced real estate business network, since 1996, marketing and selling residential, rural, strata, and recreational investment and project development real estate. Ian has received several awards recognizing his exceptional community commitment locally, as well as awards for outstanding performance and achievement from both RE/MAX International and the Vancouver Island Real Estate Board. You’ll find true real estate professionals at IanLindsay.ca.

 Eddie Van Haddock & The Rockfish: In a little town by the sea where the stories never end, lived Captain Dave and his crew, every child’s favourite friend. With a smile as wide as the ocean and a heart that’s full of dreams, he sails a mellow submarine where magic gleams and beams. Every morning at sunrise, when the world awakes anew, Captain Dave and his crew set sail in waters deep and blue. Through the ticking clock of time, where adventures come alive, they laugh and learn and play each day in their underwater dive.

Dave Graham: It started as a navigational error. Larry would later insist it was entirely deliberate — that he had intended to lean over the edge of the Mellow Submarine at precisely that moment, and that spotting the crab had been the natural result of careful observation of the sea floor, rather than having anything whatsoever to do with the fact that he had accidentally knocked his clipboard overboard thirty seconds earlier and was leaning over looking into the water, trying to see where it had gone.

Captain Dave did not press the point. The clipboard had sunk two fathoms down onto the sandy bottom of Baynes Sound, where it would be of interest to no one. But there on that same sandy bottom, resting with the serene, unhurried confidence of something that has nothing in particular to fear from anything in the near vicinity, was the most impressive Dungeness crab Larry had ever encountered.

“Larry,” said Captain Dave very carefully, “stop the boat.”

“We’re barely moving as it is.”

“Stop it more. There’s a crab down there that’s the size of a dinner plate.”

Captain Dave cut the engine completely. They drifted in the gentle current. He leaned over and looked.

“That,” he said, “is a very large crab.”

“I said dinner plate,” said Larry. “I was not exaggerating.”

Baynes Sound is the sheltered stretch of water running between the east coast of Vancouver Island and Denman Island, roughly south of Courtenay and north of Qualicum Beach. It is one of the most biologically productive marine environments on the entire British Columbia coast. The water here is cold and clean and extraordinarily rich with nutrients — mixed by the tides, refreshed by rivers, sheltered from the worst of the open Pacific weather by the island chain to the west.

Pacific Oysters grow in Baynes Sound in such abundance that the area produces more oysters than anywhere else in Canada. Clams live in the tidal mudflats in numbers that may sound improbable until you dig into the sand and find them everywhere — Manila clams, butter clams, littleneck clams, all of them filtering the water, all of them part of a food web so dense and ancient and productive that the Sound has been feeding people, birds, and marine mammals for thousands of years without running short.

And Dungeness crabs — wide-bodied, reddish-brown, armoured, equipped with claws that suggest a complete lack of interest in being trifled with — move across the sandy bottom in numbers that would genuinely astonish most people who have ever eaten one at a restaurant without thinking very carefully about where it came from.

Captain Dave knew Baynes Sound well. He let them drift.

The crab was a mature male. His shell easily 25 centimetres across, his leg span considerably more. He was moving across the sand with the deliberate, sideways, thoroughly unhurried swagger that Dungeness crabs bring to travel — like someone who has lived in the neighbourhood for a long time and decided years ago that they were not going to rush for anyone.

“I want to go down and meet him,” said Larry.

“He might try to fight you,” said Captain Dave. “Dungeness crabs are territorial, and they’re not small.”

“I am a lobster,” said Larry, drawing himself up. “My claws are larger than his claws. I’m not afraid of Dungeness crabs. I’m curious about one. There’s a difference.”

“There is,” agreed Captain Dave.

Captain Dave put on his dry suit. Larry put on nothing, because lobsters are already waterproof. They went over the side.

The water in Baynes Sound was cold the way all the best Pacific water is cold — not shocking, but definite and thorough. Getting into everything, reminding you clearly that the ocean is in charge and you are a visitor.

The bottom was sandy here, scattered with patches of eelgrass and the occasional dark rock. Visibility about eight metres in the greenish afternoon light.

The crab was even more impressive up close. He was also, as it turned out, not alone. There were four other Dungeness crabs in the immediate vicinity — smaller animals, all of them moving through a patch of eelgrass with the focused, unhurried attention of creatures that know exactly what they’re looking for.

One was excavating a depression in the sand using its front claws as shovels, turning up small worms and shellfish. Another had found something and was standing over it with its body lowered, which meant: this is mine and I would prefer not to discuss it. A third was pressed against a rock in an attitude of complete stillness that was either very effective camouflage or a deeply optimistic belief that if it didn’t move, nothing would notice it.

Larry settled to the sandy bottom on a clear patch away from the eelgrass. The large crab stopped moving. They looked at each other.

The crab raised one claw very slightly. Not quite a threat, not quite a greeting. Something precisely balanced between the two — the way two strangers might nod at each other across the street when they haven’t decided yet whether they want to do more than that. Larry matched the movement and raised one of his own claws. The crab lowered his claw. Larry lowered his. They had arrived at an understanding.

Captain Dave hovered above them in the water, watching through his mask, while Larry and the crab conducted whatever it is that crustaceans conduct when they are in the same patch of water and have decided to tolerate each other’s presence.

There was one alarming incident involving the smaller crab — the one pressed against the rock remaining perfectly still — when it was noticed by the large crab, which turned toward it, and the smaller crab departed sideways at a speed that seemed completely impossible for something with that many independent legs.

Back on deck, warming up with tea, Larry gave his report.

“The large one — I’m calling him Gerald — is fully mature, probably five or six years old judging by his shell dimensions. Dungeness crabs grow by moulting. They shed the old shell, and a new, larger shell is underneath. Initially, though, it’s very soft. While the new shell hardens over a period of days, the crab is almost entirely defenceless. That’s when they hide in the eelgrass or bury themselves in the sand and wait it out.”

“How do you know all this?” asked Captain Dave.

“Some of it Gerald communicated,” said Larry, in a tone that left no room for scepticism. “The rest I read beforehand.”

“Your notes on the clipboard,” said Captain Dave.

“The clipboard is on the bottom of the Sound,” said Larry. “The reading is in my head. This is why reading is superior to notes as a method of retaining information. Notes can be lost. Learning cannot.”

Captain Dave refilled his mug and decided not to ask any more questions.

As they warmed up, Captain Dave pointed out the oyster lines running through the Sound — long horizontal ropes suspended between buoys, hung with clusters of oysters in net bags at carefully selected depths, swaying in their tidal current. Several farms were visible from the deck, marking where the water had been turned into a working farm by families who had grown and harvested from this place over generations.

“The whole Sound is carefully managed,” said Captain Dave. “Oyster farmers, clam harvesters, prawn trappers, crab fishermen — people who make their living from this water, which means their livelihoods depend directly on the water staying healthy. They have more reason than almost anyone to pay close attention to what happens here. And they do.”

“What threatens it?” asked Larry, reaching into the forward locker for the spare clipboard. He kept a backup.

“Agriculture and urban runoff, primarily. Baynes Sound collects drainage from a large area of eastern Vancouver Island — farms, roads, towns, septic systems. If there’s too much nitrogen or phosphorus in that runoff — from fertilizers, from improperly treated sewage — it reaches the Sound and feeds algae blooms. Too much algae uses up the dissolved oxygen in the water. Less oxygen means the crabs and the clams and the oysters and the fish all start to suffer.”

“The oysters,” said Larry, taking notes. “They filter the water.”

“Each adult oyster filters up to 200 litres of water a day — removing particles, algae, bacteria. A healthy oyster population is doing constant, invisible water treatment work that benefits everything else in the Sound. The shellfish farmers know within days when something is wrong with water quality because their animals tell them. They’re on the water every single day, in every season. That accumulated daily observation is a kind of knowledge that can’t be replicated by instruments alone.”

Larry wrote: Shellfish = the Sound’s early warning system. He tapped his pen against the clipboard thoughtfully.

“They’re doing two jobs at once — commercial production and environmental monitoring. Every day, without being asked.”

“Most things in a healthy ecosystem are doing multiple jobs simultaneously,” said Captain Dave.

As the afternoon light shifted and they prepared to head north toward French Creek, Larry went to the side of the boat one final time and looked down into the green water of Baynes Sound.

“Do you think Gerald knows that the water quality matters to him?” he asked.

“He has absolutely no idea,” said Captain Dave. “He’s just being a crab. The connection between clean water and his survival is real and direct — but it’s not something he thinks about.”

“But we think about it,” said Larry. “On his behalf.”

“That’s essentially what conservation is,” said Captain Dave. “Caring about the connections, on behalf of the things that can’t think about them for themselves.”

Larry was quiet for a moment, watching the water. Somewhere below, in the eelgrass and the sand, Gerald was going about his afternoon with the same unhurried swagger he’d been applying to the sea floor since long before anyone gave him a name.

“Gerald raised his claw at me,” said Larry, “when we first faced each other. He raised it.”

“Crabs raise their claws when they feel threatened.”

“Or when they’re saying hello to someone worth greeting,” said Larry.

Captain Dave started the engine. The Mellow Submarine turned north, leaving Baynes Sound behind — its oyster farms, its eelgrass beds, its cold clean water, the crab traps and the clam flats, and the generations of human families who had gotten to know this place well enough to feed themselves from it, and carefully enough to leave it in reasonable shape for the next generation. And the one after that.

Also left behind: one very large Dungeness crab, moving across the sandy bottom below. Entirely confident in his neighbourhood. Going wherever he was going.

Eddie Van Haddock & The Rockfish: When the night falls softly and stars light up the sky, Captain Dave tucks his crew in with a gentle lullaby. Dreams of whales and mermaids, of treasures lush and green, await each little sailor aboard the Mellow Submarine. 

Ian Lindsay & Associates: Ian Lindsay of Lindsay and Associates has played an active role in the local community since 1979. He has been with RE/MAX, Vancouver Island’s most advanced real estate business network, since 1996, marketing and selling residential, rural, strata, and recreational investment and project development real estate. Ian has received several awards recognizing his exceptional community commitment locally, as well as awards for outstanding performance and achievement from both RE/MAX International and the Vancouver Island Real Estate Board. You’ll find true real estate professionals at IanLindsay.ca.