In the chilly waters of Vancouver Island's Barkley Sound, gardeners are at work on the sea floor.

The wild population of Canada's most endangered mammal, the Vancouver Island marmot, is anticipated to exceed 350 by the end of the summer thanks to the Marmot Recovery Foundation's captive-breeding efforts.

It may not seem like many, but 21 years ago the wild population had dropped to a count of fewer than two dozen.

An album of photos from the Cowichan Pride Parade 2024 in Duncan, BC, Vancouver Island. https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBwxvZ

Authors on Vancouver Island are lucky. Many of the region's communities have at least one local, independent bookstore.

“Just five per cent of the province’s land is in the Agricultural Land Reserve, and seven per cent of that is roads, bodies of water, rivers and perhaps some federal land, so they can’t be farmed even though they are in the ALR.”

Situated in the attic and bat boxes of the North Oyster Community Centre in Ladysmith, the tiny mammals have formed a maternity colony, entirely made up of female bats and their young pups.

New research offers a clearer picture of a fault line hundreds of kilometres long off the West Coast that is predicted to generate a major earthquake and tsunami commonly known as "The Big One."

The study confirms that the northern part of the fault, close to Vancouver Island and Washington, is most likely to produce a major earthquake.

Every couple of years the EVNautilus comes to explore and to place and replace monitoring experiments. If you like SlowTV (!slow_tv@lemmy.world), then this is great television.

The Nautilus will be at sea for 21 days after disembarking from the Canadian Coast Guard docks in North Saanich on June 6. The ship will boast a crew of over 50, including scientists, marine technicians, engineers, and science communicators, and there will be little downtime when out at sea.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/22212250

“If you’re living in this area, central Island or north Island, the best time to have a heart attack is actually if you’re visiting Victoria,” he warned. “That’s when you get the standard of care, that’s when you’re going to go to the cath lab. Otherwise you’re like everybody else, you’re going to get inferior treatment.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/22140987

University in Nanaimo, B.C., cites low enrolment, financial constraints as reasons for cutting 3 programs

YouTube: bbno$ - it boy (official music video)

Watching the bbno$ video released today, "it boy", I realized (later than I'd like to admit) that it's shot in Cowichan, Vancouver Island. A lot of locations are recognizable in and around Duncan.

When I saw bbno$ dancing on the boat, I finally clued in - that boat is beached at Cherry Point just down the road from my house! I took photos of the same beached boat.

"The Brazen Fork" is also shown in the video, a BBQ truck on Cowichan Bay Road (great food). The falcon landing was surely shot at The Raptors near Duncan.

There are a lot of recognizable locations from the Cowichan area. And a great song! bbno$ - it boy (official music video)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/21610656

The Oceanside woman founded Broombusters 18 years ago to save her organic blueberry farm from the woody weed. Every year since she has welcomed hundreds of volunteers who roll up their sleeves and cut it from its roots in the ground as it blooms when it’s most vulnerable to being killed.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/20941789

A series of powerful solar storms could make the northern lights visible unusually far south Friday and Saturday night in Canada.