Photographing Sea Wolves in Remote British Columbia.

This adventure takes you into one of the wildest encounters I've had, an incredible moment with seawolves. In the last few months I've been on these amazing journeys that I've yet to share, traveling by air, water, and land to some of the most remote and breathtaking places. If you love stories from the edge of the wild, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on any adventures to come. Now let's get back to seawolves. Now the setting of the beautiful locations I went to is here in British Columbia, and the beginning of the story actually starts at my eagle photography workshop. I had two workshops, one in June and the second one in July, and this is where I photograph eagles catching fish right off the surface of the water. Now a lot of people thought that we baited the fish, but this is a natural phenomenon where the fish come swimming through, and due to the tide change, the swim bladder fills up and they float to the surface. And there's such a huge change in pressure that a lot of them are either knocked out or they're dead on the surface of the water that these eagles catch. Now I've got two other YouTube videos, one that actually shows my whole workshop in June and another one that explains more of my camera settings and how I photograph these eagles catching the fish. I'll put links to those videos down in the description below and also add a link to my photography workshop for those who are interested in joining me for next year. It is a beautiful day, beautiful morning. Got my espresso coffee here. I love seeing ribbon clouds on the mountains there. After a morning of photographing loons and a farewell ceremony from the Calhous people, we said our goodbyes to most of the people, but there were a few participants that I was going to send on this really cool float plane. This is a 1941 Grumman G-21 Goose, a popular ambitious aircraft. This was being used in the U.S. military, including the Coast Guard for various roles like transport and search and rescue. It was also being utilized by the Royal Canadian Air Force. The Goose was known for its versatility, being able to operate from both land and water, and this thing is a beauty. Look at it! So a few people are going to get onto this float plane, fly up to North Vancouver Island, and the rest are going to go on a boat back to the airport and wherever they came from. And I'm staying at the lodge waiting for my float plane to take me back to where my jeep is parked. See you later. See you soon. I think this one is me. Time to go. All right, here comes my float plane. My plane is here. We're doing a couple of stops before Campbell River, so up in the air, down. I'm their first customer on this milk run. Should be pretty fun. I'm on a scheduled flight where we're going to pick up other passengers at other locations. We're going to stop at two other spots, picking up two other passengers, and these spots are right where we were photographing the eagles. Now seeing things from up high gives you a different perspective. You get to see the mixture of glacier water with open ocean water, the different tide changes, and even the river-like motion that the incoming and outgoing tide pushes and pulls against the land and the islands here. We landed. Time to pick up our next person, and then off we go to Dent Island, which is a minute that way. All right, next stop. What's the duration of the flight? 16 minutes back to Campbell River, sir. Now here's the color difference between glacier water, which is more of that sort of milkier green aqua color, and the rest of the ocean water that doesn't have, of course, all the minerals that you see here. Now it's hard to show you how beautiful it is here, and where I'm flying right now, it is sunny and extremely warm. It's 34 degrees celsius, and where I'm going, which is only a two-hour drive north, the temperature is 17 degrees celsius. It's foggy, cold, and windy. We're going out with Coastal Rainforest Safaris. Got my pants and in here is my survival jacket. So far it looks like a nice beautiful day. Some nice clouds, and then on the horizon there's some clear skies, but the wind's supposed to pick up a lot, so. Now we all woke up at around 5 30, was down at the office here by 6, so we can be out on the ocean by 6 30 to get ahead of the winds. Right here it's fairly chill, and this boat is one of the best zodiacs I've ever been in. It's incredible. We got shockwave seats, and the boat really sheds the water really well. The morning wasn't bad at all. We did see some sea otters, some sea lions, and humpback whales, but our focus was to get to this location where we might see some sea wolves before the wind and the waves really started getting crazy. Now before we got to this cove area to lay anchor and wait for the wolves, Andrew, our captain, actually saw a wolf out on the shore there, and it was still bumpy out in this open body of water, but I think it did a pretty good job of stabilizing my camera to capture some video, and of course some photos of this stunning wolf. Now we're guessing that this was last year's pup, because it looks a little thinner, lankier, and the coat isn't as filled out. Still very healthy and a beautiful coat, but it looks like more of a teenage wolf than it does a, you know, two, three-year-old adult wolf. Now after some time photographing and filming this wolf, it disappeared off into the woods, so we took off in the boat around the bend and parked the boat inside a cove. Now we laid anchor and we had breakfast, and then 20 minutes later, a different wolf came down to the beach in search and the wolf just kind of moved along looking for food just underneath rocks, and it knew we were there. It walked right down to the beach, saw us right at the very beginning, and Andrew, who was up top on the boat, he can see much further and behind some of the rocks that were positioned on the beach to give us the heads up. Now after reviewing our work and talking about how amazing that was, we only had about another 10-15 minutes before the wolf decided to come back. Most people have never heard of seawolves unless they watch the Netflix mini-series of Seawolves, which I encourage you to watch. They're found only here along the remote islands and inlets of British Columbia's coast. Around 300 to 350 are believed to exist mainly on the outer coast of Vancouver Island and surrounding archipelagos. This is just a small fragment of Canada's estimated 8,000 wolves. They are genetically and ecologically distinct subspecies of gray wolves. They are smaller, typically darker furred, and they have adapted to a marine-rich environment. 70 to 85 percent of their diet comes from marine sources including salmon, seals, shellfish, and whale carcasses. Now what struck me most was how ghost-like they are. You don't just find a seawolf, you wait, you listen, you follow the tides, and you spend hours watching the shoreline, camera in hand, hoping for that one fleeting moment where the wild allows you in. And here's the thing, despite their rarity and beauty, these wolves are not protected. In much of BC, wolves can still be hunted and trapped. Some are killed under outdated predatorial control programs, others fall victim to trophy hunting, and there's no legal protection specifically for these coastal wolves, even though their genetics and behavior are distinct. Over 1,200 wolves are reportedly killed annually in BC. Now there is a BC gray wolf management plan formally allows targeted wolf removal in specific zones to protect endangered species like woodland caribou. In other areas, wolf populations are intended to remain intact to remain ecological balance. Now you would think there would be some separation between gray wolves and managing them for the woodland caribou and seawolves, but there isn't, and you can still hunt, kill, trap seawolves today, and this is what needs to change. It's heartbreaking to think that something this wild, this perfectly adapted to its place, could disappear. But there is hope. First Nation communities, conservation photographers, scientists, and wildlife advocates are speaking out. Groups like Pacific Wild are pushing for legal protections, which is why I'm not going to share the location of these sightings, but I'm going to encourage photographers who do get out to keep their eyes peeled on the coastline for sightings just like these. We were extremely lucky to be at the right place at the right time to capture footage and photos to share and bring awareness to these incredible, incredible animals. It's amazing how well they blend in, and if you weren't looking for them, you probably wouldn't see them. The first wolf that we spotted on the beach, there was a lot of contrast between the lighter coat and the dark rocks, and when you're photographing, if you can get to an area where the water is calm enough, you want to get as low as possible. Try and get the water line down below and be a little bit more at eye level with the wolf as it's making its round along the beach. Now more and more I'm getting asked to explain video settings and how I capture these video clips out in the field. Well, I'm doing this handheld, no monopod, no tripod, and it's quite difficult. I won't lie, but I've got stabilization in my lens, camera body, that really helps. I'm also controlling my breathing, and I'm using my whole body sort of as a an anti-spring against the movement of the boat as it goes up and down, and it takes a little bit of practice, but your position in the boat is also very important. I sometimes get really low, brace myself up against the side of the boat. Maybe there's an area against the wheelhouse that I can push my back up against, and even after all of that, I still come away with shaky footage, and this is where the programs come into play. Okay, here we are. I'm in Premiere Pro. I've got all of my files here. It's not at all complete yet, but just for an example here, I've got this one clip. We're going to press play here, and you'll see how shaky everything is. So what I do is I'll go up into effects here, and I'll type in like war for warp stabilizer, and I'll drag and drop this onto my video file. It'll start analyzing it, and I can actually go over into my effects control here, and you can see on the left hand side that it's starting to do its stabilization, and its default is for a smooth motion at 50% smoothness. The method is subspace warp or warp stabilization, and then it tells me the framing rate right now. It's set up for stabilized crop and auto scale. We'll just take a look at how this looks just as is, and then from there. So you can see that it cropped way in, but if we were to press play, wow, so much smoother. Now if you look at the edges, there could be a slight warp to it. Oh, there's a little bit more there. I don't really like that, so I go from subspace warp to position, and it's stabilizing, and we're going to see how this looks again. A lot better. If you want to learn more about this, let me know down in the comments. I can go over this tutorial sometime in a future video, and I don't have a sponsor for this episode, but I do have workshops that you can check out. I've got a grizzly bear workshop later this year that has, I think, a couple spots left. I've got a Africa trip. We're going to Kenya in February. Priyanshi is my co-host, and she has over a decade of experience photographing in Africa. She brings in incredible work, both close-up and environmental. You should definitely check out her work, especially the sunset silhouette shots that she gets. It's just incredible. So all the details are there on my website. If you go to mattshannon.ca workshops and check out my Kenya eagle workshop, grizzly bear workshop, and I'd love to see you out on an adventure with me. Let's get back into the video. Now there was other wildlife while this was going on. There was an eagle way up in the tree. Here's one of them at the top of this tree, and there was a great blue heron, as well as a kingfisher that was chattering and flying around and grabbing fish out of the ocean whenever it could. Now ravens and wolves have a reciprocal and mutual beneficial relationship with one another. It is rare to see a wolf without a raven nearby, and during this recording you can see that there are two ravens up there by the rock face. They do much of the cleanup after the wolves have made a kill, and the ravens will alert the wolves if there is a dead animal nearby that needs to be opened up and torn apart, because they're there for the feast as well. Now all of this talk of food has made us hungry. We had our lunch, and we were back to photographing eagles now soaring high up in the sky. And we lost sight of the wolf behind a couple of the rocks, but he made one last appearance way out on the horizon. Now before heading back to land, we went out into the open ocean, and we saw some bait balls where tons of seabirds were catching fish right off the surface. And where there is seabirds and fish, there are whales. So we got some cool glimpses of humpback whales, and we also seen some sea otters before taking the bumpy ride back home. But luckily the wind was at our back. Now I can't tell you enough how amazing this boat is, with those seats that have the shock absorbers underneath. It was a great experience despite the wild weather. And we got to see wolves today, so everyone was stoked. Now be sure to subscribe because we actually went back out the following day, and we saw wolves again. And that's going to be in another episode. Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you on the next adventure. Ciao!