Oil

In our quest to sequester ever more sources of low-entropy energy, the Energy Returned on Energy Invested number (EROEI) becomes important. This number describes how much energy you have to expend to get an additional amount of new energy “out of the ground” and ready for use. In our past we had readily available fossil fuels with EROEI’s around 100:1 or even 200:1. Now we have run out of those and conventional oil today is less than 20:1. Non-conventional oil is below 10:1. The inefficiency, effort, and waste necessary to sequester further useful energy from fossil fuels should continue to spiral upwards as the EROEI of our dwindling fossil fuel sources spirals towards 1:1. We of course always choose to harvest the lowest hanging pear fruit first with the highest EROEI, which then leaves us with continually diminishing quality fossil fuel reserves with which to power our economies (and we wonder why there always seems to be an energy shortage…) Once you get below 1:1, well, you don’t have any more energy, at least from that particular source. Because unlike pears on a pear tree, oil doesn’t grow back the next year.

Because of the nature of the EROEI concept (efficiency goes down as the resource becomes scarce, rather than efficiency improving), we can expect the energy crunch to happen exponentially quickly, rather than gradually. And there is nothing that can be done to stop it, once we hit it. To try to fight Peak Oil by extracting more and more fossil fuels at faster and faster rates simply makes the problem worse and worse — this amounts to fighting the laws of thermodynamics. The only way to avert disaster in this situation is to get off fossil fuels as an energy source, and quickly! The Hubbert Curve looks like a nice symmetrical bell shape but the ride down is going to be nothing like the ride up. We will not have ample time to prepare and adapt to new constraints.

One of the major problems that needs to be overcome is the belief widely held throughout the realm of economics that an increasing oil price will stimulate increased oil / energy production and in turn this will foster the development of alternative energy sources, and that because of this, market forces will therefore be able to solve Peak Oil by themselves. Harking back to Econ 101, this free market dynamic would seem to be applicable if one uses an analysis of the industrial production of widgets as an example.

A Widget. Do with it as you please.

It is understandable to believe that this market dynamic should also apply to any other good as well, if one is operating under the assumption that the good in question is produced by people or companies, and if one has faith in the validity of the supply / demand chart. Wikipedia has a webpage, complete with nice smooth charts, dedicated to showing how Supply and Demand are supposed to work together in that Wonderful World of Widgets to restore and maintain balance in the markets.

Supply and Demand curves for Widgets. P is price and Q is quantity sold

From Wikipedia: “in a competitive market, the unit price for a particular good will vary until it settles at a point where the quantity demanded by consumers (at current price) will equal the quantity supplied by producers (at current price), resulting in an economic equilibrium of price and quantity.”

Hmm… let’s analyze that with respect to a widget. “If supply decreases and demand remains unchanged, then it leads to higher price and lower quantity.” This higher price should stimulate widget producers to take advantage of the imbalance and make a profit by producing more widgets until the price comes down, at which point the market reverts back to equilibrium. “Firms will produce additional output as long as the cost of producing an extra unit of output is less than the price they will receive.” Okay, sounds reasonable, I guess.

What about energy? As explained previously, in order to do anything in the universe, including “producing” a widget, we have to use energy (let’s just say we “consume” and “produce” energy for the sake of humouring the supply / demand chart, even though that isn’t correct). Therefore, when that company producing widgets decides to produce more widgets, what it necessarily also does is increase its energy consumption.

So now let’s leave behind the Wonderful World of Widgets and come back down to Planet Earth to analyze this same chart, but this time let’s say the good in question is no longer widgets, but energy, and specifically the energy that the widget producer needed more of to produce more widgets. Conventional economic theory dictates that (as with widgets) lower supply results in higher prices, which energy companies then take advantage of to produce more energy so that the equilibrium shifts back to its original position.

But wait … how are these energy companies actually “producing” energy to begin with? In order to “produce” energy, they’d also have to “consume” energy first, just like the widget company had to do. So what is it they are actually doing then? Are they consuming energy or are they producing energy? To make any kind of profit they’d have to produce more energy than they consume. But that is a perpetual motion machine, and since the first law of thermodynamics says that energy can be neither produced nor consumed, the only resolution to this logical hiccup can come from discarding the misleading concepts of energy “production” and “consumption” and moving on to the concept of EROEI. The miracle of energy “production” happens because the energy companies “invest” less energy than they “liberate”. So now we are right back at square one — EROEI.

The issues with extracting harder and harder oil as Peak Oil progresses are not just economic in nature — they really come down to net energy. While there is a price floor below which extraction of, for example, Alberta oil sand becomes uneconomical (somewhere around $30), and therefore above this price oil extraction will resume and increase, there comes a point above which it doesn’t matter how high the price goes; the limiting factors shift to become more geological in nature, not economic. If the EROEI is only 1.2 to 1, it doesn’t matter how high oil prices go, because so too will the input costs necessary to suck that oil out also rise along with it. It’s all relative, and rising prices simply shift the whole economic analysis further up the price axis; they don’t really change the fundamental EROEI problem. At below 1:1, even an infinite oil price will not bring more oil out of the ground (unless other energy sources like natural gas are cheaper but you can bet that gas prices will be following closely in the heels of oil when energy prices really get going). What happens during Peak Oil is that the supply curve continually shifts up towards a price of infinity, never to return.

Therefore, THE SUPPLY / DEMAND CHART IS NOT VALID FOR ANALYZING ENERGY MARKETS.  Some other kind of analysis will be required.

The Future of Fossil Fuels

Claims are often made in the media that we still have centuries of fossil fuels left, with the development of non-conventional oil resources like Alberta’s oil sands and with new technology like fracking (supposedly) unlocking huge reserves of natural gas and shale oil. The official website for Canada’s oil and gas industry, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (let’s put aside for a moment the fact that there does not exist any company in the world that “produces” petroleum) presents the extent of Canada’s known oil reserves at 175 billion barrels, and notes that this is the third largest in the world next to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia — although the extents of those reserves have arguably been overstated so Canada may indeed be #1, for now. The total deposit is about 1.8 trillion barrels, and this is netted down to the fraction that is technically recoverable (with an EROEI greater than 1:1). Insider sources inform me, however, that the recoverable deposits actually amount to about 350 billion barrels, but the government does not state this so as to not take the stage away from Saudi Arabia, for the time being. If you want to read more about Alberta’s oil sands deposits you can go to the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board’s annual report.

If you peruse the CAPP website you will find little discussion of how the size of Canada’s deposits relates to total global reserves and more importantly, to global oil consumption which is currently about 31 billion barrels a year, of which about a fifth goes to the US. If you dig around you can find the numbers if you know what you are looking for and if you bring along your calculator, but CAPP isn’t going to any great lengths to inform people of these basic concepts. Lots of statistics are thrown around which are generally pretty good; at least the historical statistics. The future projections seem a little ridiculous, but that’s part of their strategy, as I will explain.

CAPP does, however, make a frank admission: “Many of the world’s current producing oilfields are running out of oil.” That’s quite a statement, coming from the oil industry itself! Indeed, global oil extraction hasn’t increased over the last seven years. The increased consumption from the developing countries, especially in Asia, has been offset by the economic contraction occurring in the western world. Has global demand for oil been dropping because people have decided that they don’t want to buy a new car and improve their standard of living? Not likely. Even during a recession, oil prices remain high. We are therefore likely at Peak Oil; it would take some miraculous new discovery to be able to increase extraction rates going forward, which of course we haven’t had, as explained by the Do the Math link provided above. Oil discoveries are going down, not up, and because of this, they will soon start their slide down the back side of the Hubbert Curve. But CAPP doesn’t actually call this Peak Oil. The day the oil companies admit to the current reality of Peak Oil will be a historic one.

CAPP’s free admission of the stagnation of global conventional oil extraction might have something to do with the fact that (conveniently) the vast majority of Canada’s oil reserves are not conventional oil… They talk about how energy demand from the world’s growing economy has been and will be increasing over the next few decades, and most importantly, how Canada’s oil sands extraction is going to (conveniently) help meet this demand in the face of stagnating global conventional crude extraction. With current oil sands extraction rates at around 700 million barrels per year the deposit would last centuries! That leaves us with plenty of time to develop alternative renewable energy sources, right?

But you should now be able to see the flaw in CAPP’s logic. They correctly point out how conventional crude extraction has hit a peak globally. Then they argue that Canada’s oil sands are so large that Alberta could plug this gap in supply for the foreseeable future until alternative energy sources are developed (for which they offer nothing more substantial than vague allusions and hand waving). But they will not explicitly quantify either of those two transitions — from conventional crude to synthetic crude, and then from petroleum products to renewables. They will not do this because the numbers don’t add up. They dance around the problem to keep you from thinking about it.

Let’s do a little calculation for a sense of scale to see how long the oil sands deposits would last if they were to hypothetically be needed to power the whole world. 350 divided by 31 is about 11. That is ELEVEN YEARS the oil sands would last if they were needed to power the world! Of course, Alberta oil sand isn’t the only petroleum deposit in the world to be developed over the next few decades. But considering that globally there is a little over a trillion barrels of recoverable oil left, at current consumption rates that works out to about 40 years. Certainly new deposits will be found, but all of the big easy ones already have (rest assured that the planet is being scoured very intensely right now). Future discoveries will be small and / or difficult, with low net energy return — again, that’s what Peak Oil entails. Much fanfare is made of any significant new discoveries but the recent discovery off Norway, as an example, amounts to … are you ready? … ONE MONTH of global oil consumption. Those future discoveries which will undoubtedly be paraded around the media as the solution to our energy woes will constitute the trailing edge at the bottom of the Hubbert Curve.

Another problem not addressed by CAPP concerns the approximate EROEI of 3:1 for oil sands operations. This means that it takes about 1 unit of external energy to extract, refine, and distribute 3 units of oil sand energy into gasoline ready for your car. This external energy comes primarily in the form of natural gas which is needed to heat the bitumen in the ground to get it to flow, as well as to upgrade it afterwards into something equivalent to what typically squirts out of a conventional oil well (more hydrogen has to be added to the hydrocarbons).

A chunk of oil sand. It's not exactly ready for your gas tank, is it. How much energy do you think is required to turn it into something ready for your gas tank? Express it as a proportion of the total amount of useful energy (exergy) contained in that chunk of oil sand.

The Royal Society of Canada recently put out a report addressing the “Environmental and Health Impacts of Canada’s Oil Sands Industry“. On page 47 it states that the natural gas used for in situ steam generation alone “accounts for 20% of the energy contained in the produced bitumen”. When you add in the upgrading processes necessary to turn the bitumen into a salable synthetic crude product, and then to further refine this into gasoline, my overall EROEI estimate of 3:1, or 33%, seems about right.

Pages 47 to around 58 discuss why so much natural gas is required and what potential innovations and alternative energy sources could be substituted to reduce demand for gas. Beyond the efficiency improvements from the initial innovations that constitute “good housekeeping”, these alternative energy sources basically mean burning the less valuable fractions of the bitumen as a source of energy, in which case we can say good-bye to our 350 billion barrel deposit and net it down to something closer to 200 billion. The energy has to come from somewhere.

It is also noted on page 17 of the National Energy Board’s 2006 Energy Market Assessment that “going forward, as existing projects expand and new projects are initiated, it is likely that operators will be facing declining quality of bitumen reservoirs, with a resultant increase in energy required”. Huh. Even the NEB admits to the inevitable decline in EROEI, even for the oil sands.

Unfortunately, the Royal Society of Canada report doesn’t discuss the supply end of where this natural gas comes from. Is there enough available? According to CAPP itself, “The easier-to-produce sources of natural gas [in Canada] are in decline, so our industry is turning to sources that are more difficult and expensive to develop.” (translation — fracking). Let’s do another little calculation to see how much natural gas would actually be required for the whole oil sands deposit. At 350 billion barrels and a conversion factor of 5800 cubic feet of natural gas per barrel of oil equivalent, divided by an EROEI of 3:1, you get 670 TRILLION cubic feet. How does this compare with natural gas supplies? If we go to the official natural gas website, we find that there is about 6.2 quadrillion cubic feet of known natural gas deposits in THE WHOLE WORLD! This means that it would take a full 10% of (known) global supplies of natural gas to extract and refine the oil sands into usable products! The question must therefore be raised: when Peak Oil really starts to get into full swing, is the world’s demand for natural gas for uses other than for oil sands processing going to be increasing or decreasing? Will the world really be willing to give up this amount of natural gas for such an energy INefficient application?

So let’s assume the oil sands could hypothetically be counted on to chug along for a few decades to make up for the shortfall in global conventional crude extraction, after which the deposit would be finished. At around that time the world will be running really low on oil. A possible solution would be to use Gas-To-Liquids technology, which takes natural gas (methane) and strings together the molecules to make long chain hydrocarbons — essentially, synthetic oil. The overall efficiency of this process is around 50%. Cost-wise, well we know that it can’t be competitive with current oil sands operations, otherwise the natural gas being used by Alberta would instead be going directly into GTL facilities to make synthetic diesel. An EROEI of 0.5 to 1 can’t compete with 3:1.

CAPP reassures us that “North America has over a century of natural gas supply at today’s consumption levels.” But what about when consumption levels increase to offset Peak Oil? How long would total known global reserves (6,200 trillion cubic feet) last if they were to hypothetically be needed to ramp up to supply, oh, let’s say, half of today’s global oil consumption via GTL? 30 billion barrels a year divided by 2 is 15 billion. Multiply by 5800 to get cubic feet of natural gas, then multiply by 2 again for the 50% conversion efficiency, and we get 174 trillion. Add to this the current global use of natural gas of 55 trillion cubic feet and we get 230 trillion. Divide this into 6,200 and we get TWENTY SEVEN YEARS.

Now, lots more natural gas is going to be found, and therefore this number should be increased by some factor. What that factor is, I don’t know. But this calculation doesn’t even consider the EROEI of extracting that gas, which we know will get lower over time as the lowest hanging pear fruit is always picked first. And just because it is known that 6,200 trillion cubic feet exists underground doesn’t mean it can all be recovered. So there is a lot of wiggle room in these numbers, in both directions, but they give an idea of the general magnitude of the problem.

A suggestion by the energy companies to ameliorate the large amount of natural gas needed to process oil sands is to instead build nuclear reactors to provide this energy. Another suggestion is to use coal. Okay, let’s analyze that. Coal is the only fossil fuel I haven’t yet addressed, so what is its capacity? The World Coal Association states that there is about 800 billion short tons left. Yearly consumption is about 7 billion tons, leaving us with over 100 years worth of coal at current consumption rates. However, there seems to be some skepticism by other analysts towards these rosy estimates. In any event, the methodology for estimating the depletion time of coal deposits suffers from the same problem that the analyses for natural gas and oil sands do as I previously explained — that when conventional oil extraction rates start sliding down the back side of the Hubbert Curve, then other fossil fuel sources will be called upon to take up the slack. Coal can also be converted into liquid fuels via coal-to-liquids technology (interestingly, this was pioneered by the Germans in the second world war because they had little access to oil). But the thermal efficiency of these substitutions won’t be anywhere near what conventional crude used to provide. Therefore, to maintain current energy consumption rates after Peak Oil will require an exponentially increasing consumption of natural gas, oil sand, and coal. This herculean feat would cut the forecast lifetimes for coal deposits to a fraction. And again, if this process was cheap, easy, and efficient, then it would already be in widespread use. But it’s not, and that tells you something about its economics.

If I may offer an opinion here… I can’t help but notice that when we have reached the situation where previous sources of direct energy (coal and nuclear power plants) are now being proposed to provide secondary energy to simply extract and process additional energy from the ground in order to “produce” something (synthetic crude oil) that only a few decades ago used to squirt directly out of the ground with an EROEI of 100:1 …… well, we just might be approaching the bottom of the barrel. We moved away from coal for transport a long time ago because better energy sources became available. What does it say when we are forced to return back? Desperate situations call for desperate measures. We are in an energy predicament and these last ditch efforts are really just an outright admission of how close our overall energy supplies are to an EROEI of 1:1.

Despite this critical situation, CAPP still manages to maintain a straight face and make the ridiculous assertion that, “We believe that we can and must advance environmental protection, economic growth and a secure energy supply simultaneously.” (emphasis mine).

I fail to see how exponentially increasing the rates of fossil fuel extraction to maintain current energy consumption rates in the face of a spiraling EROEI can in any way be consistent with “environmental protection”. When was the last time you heard of environmentally friendly fossil fuel extraction? And what of the tremendous amounts of carbon released into the atmosphere with the inefficient EROEI’s we will soon be facing? There’s a reason that carbon got deposited into the ground in the first place. Should we have faith in Carbon Capture and Storage? Wake me up when that fantasy becomes reality. And how do you “capture and store” emissions from millions of individual tailpipes? And CCS has significant energy requirements, meaning the overall EROEI will go even lower.

As to the assertion of “advancing a secure energy supply”, it would seem to me that using up our remaining supplies of non-renewable fossil fuels as quickly as possible without any serious consideration of the consequences would be the antithesis of securing an energy supply! Wouldn’t the most secure energy supply be the one that’s still in the ground? Or renewable?

And my analysis up until now assumed that current demand for energy would continue going forward. But if we are going to also factor in exponential demand increases from future economic growth (which CAPP explicitly states “must” advance), then the situation becomes even more dire. Isn’t China building something like one new coal fired power plant every week?

Still another problem not addressed by CAPP is that the oil sands are “slow oil”. It takes a huge amount of engineering effort to extract and refine oil sand. Factories need to be built overtop each deposit. This cannot be ramped up quickly like drilling more oil wells can. Therefore, it’s not really feasible to expect oil sands activities to be able to miraculously ramp up to a rate capable of offering a significant response to Peak Conventional Oil and its imminent steep decline down the Hubbert Curve. And of course, even if it was, then the deposit would only last a few decades.

CAPP does not talk about the rate problem because they don’t want you thinking about the two most important words in the whole world right now — Peak Oil. CAPP wants to paint a picture of a prosperous future, powered by petroleum products of course. A frank discussion of Peak Oil would by definition invalidate such a rosy outlook, because Peak Oil directly implies that not only can the rate of oil pulled out of the ground not be increased, but it will unavoidably decline, and this is simply a function of physics. CAPP wants you to have faith that the oil extracted from Canada will be able to supply increased global demand for a long long time, so there is no immediate need to drop the fossil fuel energy subsidies, curtail energy consumption from general use and instead divert the remaining petroleum reserves into building a renewable energy infrastructure. We just need to get that darn pipeline built out to the west coast to supply the world! Then everything will be fine! Such is the modus operandi of perception management.

It is part 1 of my look into the claims made by many that bringing everyone in the world up to a western standard of living or equivalent will be easy, or even possible, and that there will be lots of room left over to spare. These claims seem fantastical at best. In Part 1 I look at how much more food the planet would need to produce to accomplish this, and part 2 will look at whether it is even possible that this could be done. Part 2 will be more involved so I’ll add that sometime later.

A humpback zooming around the bay. They spend the winter in the clear tropical waters of Hawaii, having babies and not eating because there is little to eat in the tropics -- that's why you can see so far through the water. Then they migrate to our coastline for the summer and feed on all the productivity from the upwelling nutrient rich waters meeting summer sunshine. They have interesting feeding strategies including working cooperatively to make bubble curtains to corral herring schools and then chomping them down in one bug gulp.

It was raining a bit in the morning as I packed up but as soon as I pushed off it ended.

It was low tide so the low beach with eelgrass was nice and calm. Goodbye Brown Island! I'll be back someday!

I made the kilometer long crossing to the mainland, a little wary of the humpback hanging around.

The sun came out.

Big waves

A few seconds later. If I needed to come ashore I would be out of luck for the next 5 km or so, although there were a few sandy coves, albeit with fairly large waves.

I have seen these barges a few times, loaded with colourful containers, heading north.

It was a nice paddle along the open coast to the point where I would turn east into more sheltered water. There were lots of birds and some boats going by.

This is a nice beach on an isthmus separating the peninsula from the rest of the mainland.

This pigeon guillemot let me drift fairly close. This wasn't even taken with my bird lens.

But not too close

Heavy swell on a reef

Looking across Rivers Inlet to the BC Ferry heading north along Calvert Island

Taking a break after rounding the peninsula. Looking west.

Looking north

Looking south

Here is the beach on the other side of that isthmus. It has a nice campsite. I wish I had stayed there an extra night.

I crossed eastwards over the bay to the main part of the mainland, which I would continue along northwards. I was getting very warm in my drysuit in the sun. I had to pull the top part off. Wearing it would be out of the question; I would overheat in no time. I don’t know what you’d do if you were somewhere treacherous with cold rough water, where you had to wear it for safety reasons, but you were stuck out in the blasting sun.

I paddled along under a big wide sky with the clouds parting around me. I looked west to the open ocean and to the productive seas all around me. In front of me was the rest of the world, an entire ocean of possibilities. I thought of all the marine life passing in and out of this place, some stopping to spend some time and others merely passing through on their journey to someplace else, maybe no place in particular. Others spend their whole lives here, gleaning their nutrition from sunshine and the sea water that swirls through, itself on its own never-ending journey around the world on the currents and through the clouds, all driven by that same sunshine. The fantastically intricate plankton glistening in the shafts of sunlight, going about their lives without knowing or caring about all the problems we create. For a while I went back to my early years, wide eyed in amazement at the wonder of the ocean, back to those salmon fishing trips out to Barkley Sound on Vancouver Island when I was first immersed in our coast.

The final leg of my trip this year was before me -- Duncanby Landing is at the base of that far mountain.

But first I had some interesting little islands to make my way through. They reminded me of the Broughtons. I was in no rush.

One of the fishing lodges I wasn't going to.

There's Duncanby Landing.

Looking up Rivers Inlet

After landing and taking my stuff out of my kayak I found this passenger that had been with me all day. This isopod was almost 2 inches long. There was actually two of them -- one underneath that was being mated with.

First thing’s first was to have a big chicken taco salad in the dining room with Sirius Satellite Radio blasting classic rock from the 70′s. Sorry, chicken.

I used the sat phone and arranged with Pacific Coastal for a pickup in a couple hours.

Packed and ready to go

But the plane actually ties up on this other dock, at the very end of it...

I asked a young guy on the dock helping me with my stuff (what a nice guy) what their work schedule was like here — 3 months straight, 7 days a week. Wow, that’s impressive. At least there’s nothing to blow your money on out here.

My first time in a Grummand Goose!

Looking up Smith Inlet. I came out along the northern shore, from the back right heading towards the left.

The southern part of Smith Inlet is a more convoluted maze of narrow channels between Greaves Island and the mainland.

Pack Lake behind Mereworth Sound

I wonder if anyone has ever been to those ponds on that mountain.

Pack Lake, looking eastwards

Looking westwards to Burnett Beach and the open ocean off Cape Caution

That's Belize Inlet! Nakwakto Narrows is to the right just outside the frame.

Belize Inlet on the left, leading through the narrows to Schooner Channel to the right, which you can't really see because it's mostly hidden behind Bramham Island.

As we crossed the strait I looked across to Shelter Bay. No indication from here of the drama that went on there last year in the trees.

That's "oil spill alley" from last year, where I had lunch before crossing the next big channel ahead of me. The pigeon guillemot nesting island is that little one on the left.

That's what kelp beds look like from the air.

We touched down and I was once again brought back to civilization. When I come out of the wilderness I notice that there seems something odd about how we act. After a few hours this sensation wears off, though never fully, I guess as I too re-integrate into the Borg collective. Funny, when I go into the wilderness I don’t feel anything odd about it… Must be the bond market. It influences us in ways more profound than we can imagine.

I stayed at the backpackers hostel again and tonight there were fireworks on. The whole town was out, right in front of the hostel. The next day I caught the bus back to Courtenay.

Since the weather seemed better, today would be another break day, this time to dry out, not to get soaked.

The water was calm at low tide. It really quietens down at low tide here and the waves from the swell almost disappear. But then when the tide comes up so do the waves. It must have something to do with the bathymetry of the shore which attenuates the waves at low tide.

Looking back up Smith Inlet

The odd boat went by, but most of the boats went by on the other exposed side of the island because that's where the open ocean is. Every boat that goes up the coast has to go by there. I could hear them but not see them. Only boats that have a specific reason for entering Smith Sound went by me here, and that totaled two over the two days.

The panoramic views from this spot are quite something. You can see from the south, all the way eastwards and towards the north, all through Smith Sound. You can see the weather as it rolls in.

There were also many planes flying north and south right over me. I guess this is a major flyway.

Indian paintbrush

The weather turned sunny and I took out my 70-200 lens with the teleconverter to start taking some photos.

As I was in the meadow a hummingbird came by. Great! She wasn't shy and I could maybe get some good shots of a bird in a flower.

Then this happened!

That actually would have been a nice shot of a hummingbird in a flower. But what the hell was going on? Suddenly everything fogged up! I freaked out and tried to locate the source of the fog, and unfortunately it wasn’t between the lens and camera, it was inside the lens. I have heard of lenses being ruined in the Amazon when persistent fog caused fungus to grow and etch the glass. And this was no cheap lens!

I didn’t know what to do. This was obviously happening because of all the humidity in the bags over the last few days seeping into the lens, and then when put in the warm sunshine it condensed out. The only thing I could do was lay it on my sleeping bag under the tarp, separated from the camera, and leave it to air out.

So then I took out my 70-300 lens which is a cheaper, though still expensive, lens. And almost immediately it did the same thing! I opened it up too and laid it out. Then I took out my little 35 f/1.8. It happened again! I laid it out. Then I took out my wide angle Sigma, and luckily nothing happened with that one. I attribute that to sloppier build quality…

Anyways, after about 1/2 hour, to my great relief, they aired out, as good as new.

I took advantage of the sunshine to charge my batteries. So it turns out I hadn't needed my computer batteries last night to charge them after all.

Brilliant white sand, like a tropical isle, too bright to look at in the sun.

Man, when the sun came out, I was roasting under the tarp! Outside wasn't any better in the bright reflections from the sand. There were a few showers now and then but they didn't amount to much.

I went tidepooling. Here are two genetically determined colour variants of the ochre star. These happen to eat mussels, which is the answer to the skill testing question the other day about why some logs are clean of mussels while others aren't (some logs can be accessed by stars at high tide, while others can't).

That's a limpet on the left on pink coralline algae, next to a big closed up green surf anemone

Tidepool sculpin

Scapula from a large mammal that died and washed up here, probably a sea lion.

The ball of the shoulder from the same animal. There were a few bones lying around from this carcass.

Yellow monkey flower

I listened to the weather report which was improving. I went over to the next cove to see what was there, and immediately found something interesting…

I found the reason for the island's name, gushing into the sand.

Literally, like tea.

I filled up my empty water jugs with it just in case I needed it, but I would only drink it as a last resort. It tastes a little funny, but I don't know if it's harmful.

I started thinking about how much carbon gets leached from the forests by this tannin tea. It must be significant. In most forests the carbon that is absorbed from the atmosphere is released back as CO2 when the matter breaks down on the forest floor, or if the forests burn. But here, it is so wet that decomposition is incomplete and it simply washes out. It probably doesn’t always flow intensely brown like this; most likely it’s because it is the height of summer and soil activity is higher.

Another way forests release carbon back into the atmosphere is through direct release of isoprene through their leaves. I find nutrient cycling in ecosystems interesting, because we are all part of that. All our food comes from there.

Columbine

Returning to nature

The beautiful little windswept wildflower meadow

A grey whale came by the kelp line about 20 meters off shore. There were whales everywhere. You only have to stand and watch for 15 minutes and you are bound to see one. Greys feed by sifting mouthfuls of mud through their rakers to separate out the shellfish. They spend the summers up here and migrate south to Mexico for the winter to have babies, most in Bahia San Ignacio on Baja California.

As I was finally getting ready to go, the rain picked up, but that was okay because I was in my drysuit. I came prepared! I immediately crossed over to the north shore of the inlet and began searching for a creek from which I could fill my water bottles because I was getting very low. I wanted a little stream, not a raging river, since the stream would be groundwater that I wouldn’t have to filter. There were tons of streams with all the rain; it was just a matter of finding one that was easy to access.

I came upon this nice beach with a little creek running into the sand.

I used my underwater camera housing because it was so rainy, so the pictures are all blurry.

That's where it came from -- perfect!

A fishing boat went by as I started off again. I went past another beach with a big raging creek. The rain started to taper off so I pulled my head out of the drysuit since I was getting too warm.

I continued on for a while, following the interesting shoreline as I moved west towards the open ocean. I came upon a bay with a large brown sandy beach and I went in to investigate.

There was a succession of about four of these beaches, really nice. I don't know how easy it would be to find a spot to camp above the tideline though, with these midnight super high tides.

But the water was very brown from all the runoff. I almost thought it might be an algae bloom.

One of the sources of brown, a tea-like raging stream, with goops of foam drifting away in the salt water as it entered.

Streams of foam. The sea water here was like tea.

Rain was off in the distance.

I came upon another of those interesting floating logs.

My destination was a little island out at the mouth of the inlet, where there is supposed to be a beautiful sandy white beach on the lee side of the island.

As I was reaching the end of the mainland before heading across to the islands, a final bay presented this interesting sight -- a zodiac full of people in survival suits paddling to the rocks. I didn't know what to make of it. In retrospect I probably should have gone over to see what was going on, but they didn't gesture for me. And they had nice yachts anchored just to the left of here in the sheltered bay.

I donned my drysuit again as I crossed over to the islands, especially since the weather was staring to close in.

Here it comes.

I crossed over to Brown Island as the rain started pelting down. As I was approaching I startled a pair of sea lions about 30 feet off the bow.

The problem was that there was a lot of waves here and landing on this beach wouldn't be simple given all the rocks just below the surface. I paddled over to the left and found a spot that might allow me to land.

I waited until a break in the waves and then raced in over the reef in a foot of water. Just as I was landing a big wave came up behind me and if I hadn’t been perpendicular it probably would have knocked me over. I pulled out ASAP.

The beach was brilliant white crushed shell.

I played with my underwater still camera in the tidepools. This is a green surf anemone, which only grow in the tidepools on the exposed west coast. They can also dry out for short periods too.

Surfgrass

Usually these half in / half out shots are in tropical locales with coconut palms above and coral reefs below.

It was still raining and I got a little sleepy so I took a nap by lying on a log in my drysuit. It was very comfortable, just the right temperature to be lying in the rain.

Then I took my drysuit off, and now it wasn’t so warm! Those things really work.

This beach had a beautiful little wildflower meadow of primarily coastal strawberry, but also lots of other interesting plants thrown in. Here is Indian paintbrush.

I decided to set up the bat instead of the tent and sleep on the sand because the bugs didn't seem too bad.

I lay under the tarp and had a nap for a couple hours and collected this much water off the drip. I hope there aren't any toxins leaching into the water.

Brilliant white sand

So many types of shells

Some abalone shells, or "mother of pearl". I did a little garbage cleanup and surprisingly there was very little.

Looking south across Smith Inlet

I even pulled out my computer to check Google Earth and to charge my GoPro cameras and download photos. I didn't know if I'd have sun again to charge the GoPro's so I decided to sacrifice my computer's battery. The sand wasn't a problem at all because it was the perfect size -- large enough that it doesn't stick to everything and get everywhere.

There was a really low tide in the morning. The tent was nice and dry for packing up too.

I was up early and launched in a little tiny beach down there by 8 a.m. A few minutes later, and the beach was under water, so I timed that well.

It was cloudy and I had a slight tailwind. And the currents were going my way too. I made an easy 7 km/hr and knocked off a few kilometers in no time. How so much easier this was than 14 hours previously when I was fighting the winds to the campsite. Sometimes you just need to know when to call it quits and relax. Work for the sake of work is pointless, counterproductive, unless you are doing it for the physical exercise. I say the same thing about economics — our constant struggle to grow our economies bigger is futile and ultimately self destructive. We need to stop.

Some dispersed heli-logging cutblocks across the inlet. This is an interesting situation because the smaller cutblocks look nicer and result in less disturbance, but the direct implication is that we aren't ever going to have another large contiguous block of mature forest there if we continually rotate it through these dispersed small cutblocks, which aren't ideal habitat for certain animals like spotted owls that need large contiguous blocks. But, every piece of land is managed for different objectives, so this may be appropriate for this location.

Those poachers just never quit. I wonder how many salmon they took.

Even way up here I'm seeing the same patterns on logs I did down south. The log on the left is covered with mussels (which are the black things), whereas the log on the right is devoid of mussels. Why? You see this every 50 meters along the shore.

After about 6 km, a headwind picked up, but I had still done a respectable haul in the early morning hours. After this I paddled along the shoreline closely, hugging the coves to stay out of the wind.

Looking out towards the ocean

There is a lot of floating plant debris out here, from both the terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Much of it enters via the rivers. There is often an oily sheen on the surface which is all the biological oils accumulating with the tides and winds. This is ecological productivity in its raw form. Here is a salal leaf turned red.

It is not uncommon to see skunk cabbage leaves floating around in the salt water, They likely got there from grizzly bears ripping the plant up in the muddy parts of rivers and then eating the succulent stems and leaving the leaves to wash out into the ocean.

This was an interesting tethered floating log which I think had something to do with the relatively fresh adjacent cutblock.

I tied up to a cedar tree and had lunch (dates and peanut butter) with the wind keeping me in my spot. I made a little video commentary but the batteries on my audio recorder soon died.

You can't do this in most kayaks. And you also can't climb up to the front of the boat either. And you also can't stand up in most kayaks.

I continued on and now the ocean waves were becoming noticeable. There are quite a few islands out in the mouth of the inlet which break up the swell but I was now starting to experience it, the closer I got.

That's the open ocean out there in the gaps.

I followed the shoreline a bit more and the rain started. I turned on the video camera to record what it’s like in a squall as I paddled. At this point the north shore of the inlet reaches a point, and doubles back a bit before heading up north and then west again. I had the choice of crossing some open water in this weather or following the coast back and crossing up north amongst some islands where it would be safer. I chose the latter.

The weather was making interesting mist patterns on the nearby mountains.

Hues of green

I crawled up the north side of Dennison Island, all the while scoping out potential campsites as I went. I didn’t see anything obvious and I crossed over to the next island to the west, which had some rocks at its exposed end that I was hoping would be suitable. But the rain was really starting to pick up. I could see it coming in from the west. I crossed over to the island before it hit and took shelter under a big overhanging cedar tree, maintaining my spot with the odd paddle stroke against the wind. I would stay here until the weather abated. After 1/2 hour it didn’t and I had to make the decision to move on in the rain. I was only in my rain gear, not my drysuit, so I would get wet. But if I could pull out for the day that would be OK.

I got to the rocks and the pullout was difficult, but doable.

The pullout was up the slippery and tortuous jumble of big rockweed-covered rocks,all in the pouring rain.

I got my stuff up but I didn’t want to open it because anything inside that was still dry would then get wet; it was still pouring rain.

I stood around for probably an hour waiting for the rain to end, which wasn’t. I was getting wet and cold. I was not a happy camper, literally.

I realized I had to do something so I managed to cook up some fettucini alfredo which wasn’t very good, but it warmed me up a bit.

I became totally soaked. I was getting cold, frustrated and angry. I yelled my profanity and frustrations into the weather. I finally bit the bullet because I had no other choice, and tried to set up the tent with the tarp in a small and contorted space on some rocks. This did not work.

To get my tent out of the way I moved it onto these rocks temporarily. Magically, I had found my tent spot for the night. Sometimes I amaze myslef at the spots I can sleep in. Yes, that is three boulders I was draped across.

I got my stuff semi-organized and I hunkered down in the tent for a while to listen to the weather — a quasi stationary trough in Queen Charlotte Sound was sending waves of rain out. Well, that’s where I was, and that’s what I was receiving.

It rained all night, but miraculously it stopped mid morning the next day. I wasn’t going anywhere that day; it would be my day off. If I tried to pack up now everything would become soaked.

I got up and sort-of dried out. There was a hummingbird hanging around, going in the little salal flowers. My breakfast was some apple cinnamon oatmeal. A banana slug seemed to really go after the residue on the oatmeal packet. I threw the slug into the bushes. Then I thought about how long the banana slug population has been isolated on this little island, off the bigger island, which itself is isolated from the mainland.

I felt sorry for myself, thinking that I am the only life form here that can’t handle the rain. Nothing else cares about it, they just go on with their lives regardless.

Then I saw all the silverfish bugs taking refuge in the dry corners above my tent in the morning, and realized that I may not be alone in my desire for dryness.

There were frequent salmon jumping out there.

I didn’t do much all day; I mostly sulked. I had a bath in the ocean, and took some video footage of waves coming into the tidepools. I didn’t even open my camera bags because they were soaked.

The rain started at 6 in the morning -- right when I wanted to get up. I poked my head out and got this shot before retreating inside.

As usual, I sat in my tent, getting really bumbed out, until it finally ended at 11. I packed up with everything mostly wet.

I was getting my boat loaded when a fairly large boat came by and then doubled back around after it passed me to check me out, probably just to make sure I was okay because I don’t think there are many kayakers up here. It was a nice gesture, but in doing all their twists and turns they sent some big wake my way which really caused havoc with my precariously placed half-loaded kayak. I then headed out.

Up close at that big slide

A zodiac zoomed by. I couldn't figure out where they came from since it is a long ways to anywhere up here. Your closest neighbours are 20 km away at least.

Looking back to where I came from

The weather was fairly calm for the most part. I played with my underwater video camera as I went. The water was brown from all the river runoff. The vegetation here never really dries out so decomposition is incomplete, and lots of tannins are produced which make the runoff water look like tea. The intertidal life isn’t too diverse up here because the salinity can get low when it rains hard. But mussels, barnacles, and rockweed all flourish. There were also tons of giant sunstars along the steep rocky subtidal slopes here up the inlet. These are the monsters of the sea and they can get over a meter across. They are the fastest starfish in the world. Most of their prey around here deploy unique escape mechanisms when they smell an approaching sea star. Clams stick out their feet and try to walk away, and if they’re lucky they’ll go in the right direction. California sea cucumbers start doing the wave and try to squirm away. Swimming scallops do what their name suggests — they swim away, just like in the cartoons. Sea urchins lay down their spines flat, exposing thousands of little pinchers called pedicellaria, with which they pinch the sensitive tube feet of the star.

After a while a headwind started picking up as usual in the afternoon when it isn’t raining. I tied off to an overhanging cedar and had a 45 minute break for lunch — Clif bar, dates, and peanut butter — what else. I battled the winds for a few more hours and made it as far as I thought would be practical — no point wasting energy fighting the wind when in the morning it would likely be calm. There was a little peninsula sticking out that became an island at high tide and it looked ideal to camp on. It was bare rock up top.

I landed on the thickly mussel-infested protected beach in the leeward bay behind the peninsula, but as I pulled one of the bags off my kayak the force of this pushed it up against some mussels and gave it a big gash. Not deep enough to cause a leak, but it would need attention.

Looking back

The poachers, this time with a different boat, were still at it a few kilometers away across the channel.

What a great view I had out towards the opening of the inlet.

I had zucchini lasagna for dinner and took advantage of the relative dry to put some Aquaseal on the gash. I would only need a few hours of dry for it to set.

At midnight, under a full moon, the tide came way up, floating my boat which of course was tied off since I take no chances, this time to a big rusty shackle lying around. All that stuff in the middle would be covered with water if I didn't move it. It came to within about 8 inches of my tent. Not only that, but I also had the low drone of the poachers going all night to keep me awake, which wouldn't normally bother me, but these guys did.

They were nice enough to leave me a lamp post. It didn't work though.

Looking south-east down the blind arm of the channel that goes no further than you can see.

Looking north-east up the main part of Smith Inlet which goes for another 6 km to the head where the Nekite River enters in a big estuary, populated by grizzly bears at certain times of the year.

Looking west back out Smith Inlet

I rounded the corner after crossing the inlet and this merganser family did not like me there one bit. They scurried away with a lot of noise and ended up across the channel before they settled down. Sorry, guys.

There is another parallel arm to Smith Inlet which goes all the way back from about the entrance of Wyclese Lagoon to this point, just behind that hill.

Looking towards Jap Island, in the middle of the estuary.

Finally I arrived at the lodge and had to round the log boom to get to the building. There was a dead baby seal draped over the very end of the boom.

I was a day early unfortunately, and they were all booked up, and would be for a few more days. But the new guests weren’t arriving until mid afternoon so they invited me on a 1.5 hour bus tour up the road to the river blind to see what we might see. The problem is there weren’t many bears around at this time of year. In the spring they come down to the estuary to graze on plants, and in the fall they come down to the river to catch returning salmon (there are no sockeye in this river because there is no lake and therefore nothing running at the moment). But in the summer, the bears mostly disperse up into the higher elevations.

There are always swallows at these remote settlements along the coast.

There was a younger Swiss couple here on honeymoon and an older Australian couple that had just flown in the day before on that plane. He did see me, but didn’t take a photo. They had been all over the world touring big game parks, and he had lots of stories from Africa. He had a big wildlife lens too, a Canon, which seemed much lighter than my Nikon setup.

We piled into the special little bus for our tour.

We drove up a few kilometers to a bear highway. The guides have hiked several kilometers up this trail, which the bears use to move around the valley.

At the head of this trail is a rub tree.

Looking across the Nekite from the blind. When the salmon run this area is packed with bears and they sometimes come in the blind.

A bear wallow where they like to roll in the mud, in a quiet backwater of the river. They like to eat the stems of skunk cabbage in these muddy habitats.

We saw no bears on my tour but that was okay. I filled up my water bottles, got packed up and then the new people came in on their plane. I said goodbye and headed back out. I immediately got hit by a squall with hard rain but I kept to the shoreline and I was fine. The plane seemed to come check me out after it took off, then circled back around. I think they were worried about me in the squall. They don’t know how tough I am!

The weather closing in

Just for a sense of scale ... looking across the inlet to my previous night's campsite at the logging camp.

I moved my way westward along the shoreline looking for a place to camp and eventually found a suitable spot not too far from where the straight shot out Smith Inlet begins, which I did not want to go past since it would be hard to find a campsite. The rain stopped when I pulled out.

The pull-out wasn't too bad, just lots of slippery rockweed. I camped on the top of that rock center left.

The rockweed really goes nuts in this low salinity brackish water. There seem to be two species here, which you can see in this shot. I will ID them later.

A nice way to end the day!

I sat in my tent, bumbed out listening to the steady rain and the drone from the poachers, until 11 a.m. but I stayed fairly dry inside. When it finally ended I came out for breakfast. The poachers were still at it.

It was muggy when the rain stopped.

I've seen a few of these. Someone's been here surveying.

Looking up the inlet to where I would be going

It was a difficult put-in with the low tide about 10 feet below the bare rock above. It was tricky getting everything down but as usual, the barnacles amongst the rockweed gave me traction if I was careful.

More recent petroglyphs

They last a long time, surprisingly, in this wet climate.

I headed east, following the southern shoreline of the inlet, past hundreds of waterfalls of varying sizes tumbling down into the water. I filled my bottles. There were lots of little salmon along the shoreline, and they especially liked the places where sizable streams entered. I stopped at one creek and had my floating lunch in the muggy heat — a Clif bar, dates, and peanut butter.

I dawdled along, as I only had 12 km to go in total today to the forestry dock where I was sure there would be somewhere to camp. The water was flat and I had a slight tailwind.

A float plane went by as it flew up the inlet heading east. I figured it was going to the grizzly lodge, where I was also going. I hoped they took a photo of me, which would put my size into perspective. I’d see them tomorrow.

That's the plane just right of center, this time heading south after stopping at the grizzly lodge to the left, way up the inlet.

Old slide on the left, new slide on the right. I'm not sure how they start.

The tailwind picked up so I moved out into the channel a bit more to take advantage of it.

Finally the dock showed up after rounding point after point.

Perfect!

This truck was pretty moldy. The battery was either gone or dead.

I went fishing off the dock right in front of my kayak.

This pregnant perch was just sitting there on the dock. I couldn't figure out how it got there.

Within seconds of dropping the hook I caught a fish. I wasn’t going to keep any, I just wanted to see what was down there.

Yellowtail rockfish

Some other kind of rockfish, not sure which type

Whitespotted greenling

Kelp greenling. I lost my pliers trying to get the hook out out of its mouth. Oh well, they were only a few dollars and it saved me some weight!

I must have pulled up 10 fish in 15 minutes. It goes to show how prolific marine life can become, away from fishing pressures. That’s what the whole world was like not too long ago. Unfortunately no one from that era is still alive to provide perspective so we plod along generation after generation, accepting more and more degraded ecosystems as “the norm” because we know nothing different. Kind of a like the old story about being able to slowly boil a frog alive but if you throw him straight into hot water he will jump out.

One of the problems with rockfish fishing is that they come up from the deep and the drop in pressure causes their swim bladders to expand out their mouths. Then when they are thrown back they cannot swim back down because they are too buoyant. They get stuck on the surface and either die or get eaten by birds. The bycatch is very unfortunate. What we need, and some people are working on this, is a method to send the fish down to the deep on a weight, at which point their swim bladders will compress back down. Then they are released and can continue living and spawning for future generations. Unfortunately this is not used commercially. My hook went down to about 60 feet and they had no problem swimming back down from the surface. But if they come from 200 feet that is another issue.

A Sikorsky Sky Crane flew over heading south. They use these for heli-logging. They are very large and powerful choppers that can pick up entire huge cedar logs while they are still standing. The fallers go in and buck the the tree while it's still standing. Then they almost cut it down, leaving a 1 inch line of wood in the middle of the cut to keep the stem standing. Then the chopper comes in and lifts the log off. This reduces breakage from huge logs falling to the ground.

I decided not to do the portage from Triangle Lake to Smith Inlet. My knee was still pretty sore from the last portage and John didn’t recommend the bushwhack up to the road. I don’t think he realized how well I can bushwhack, but I have to say, I wasn’t really looking forward to it either. Plus I didn’t have a map of the area, although I could easily get it on Google Earth no problem. And I didn’t have any first hand accounts of the road so it could have been all brush covered at some points. Anyways, I just didn’t feel like it.

I made a few trips to carry my stuff to the dock. I was getting pretty warm hiking in the sun. Four round trips at 1 km each is 8 km. Pretty good morning workout! I had a bath in the lagoon.

Etienne saw a dying sockeye right beside the dock in about four feet of water. We ran for the net and scooped it out. Then they made it for dinner but I left without having any.

I departed the dock in beautiful weather, heading for the narrows for the 8 p.m. high tide, and I would hopefully be able to pass earlier than that.

But first I filtered some drinking water from the lagoon since it tasted fresh. Apparently the surface 4 feet are fresh and it is salty underneath. It has a tidal range of only 20 to 40 cm at maximum. I discovered a little later when I drank the water that it wasn’t totally fresh, but still drinkable.

Looking back towards Long Lake

Wyclese Narrows is in there somewhere. That little mountain is on the other side of Smith Inlet.

A heli cutblock above Wyclese Narrows. I wondered if that's where the worker got attacked.

Looking east up the valleys as I approached the narrows.

There it is -- the narrows. It was going pretty good and I could hear the raging water so I decided to wait it out.

Thankfully someone already thought about that and tied up a log boom dock for me, but first I had to scare an eagle off. I waited about 15 minutes for the white water to die down, at around 6 p.m.

The unique salinity variations of the narrows make for some interesting algae growth on the submerged logs.

Beautiful pond scum

Different pond scum!

I then went for a ride through the narrows. The actual narrows aren’t very long, maybe 100 meters. I used my GPS and it said I was going 8 km/hr, without paddling.

When I got through the narrow part of the narrows the ecology changed noticeably since we were now in mostly brackish water. There was mussels and barnacles and Fucus seaweed. There was also lots of seals and jumping salmon, and eagles too, which I hadn’t seen anywhere on the lake or lagoon. All the sockeye have to funnel through here.

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As I had passed through the main narrows I passed this sedge beach. Looks like bear habitat.

What's that I see through the trees?

It's Smith Inlet! I finally made it!

Looking up Smith Inlet. There was no one around except of course the poachers busy at work.

I turned west because there was a little island about a kilometer out that might present some camping opportunities. But it turned out to not be very good so I instead decided to just head east up the inlet until I found a suitable campsite.

I soon came upon some rocks which provided a sheltered pullout from the wind-generated waves coming up the inlet.

I set up camp and made some dinner, mulligan stew with all the spices.

The tide came pretty close to my tent that night.

The birds like using this rock for shellfish-bashing.