Green Shores, Shoreline Mapping & eelgrass workshop report

A very small number of people attended this workshop. It was disappointing, because Susan and I had thought that this would have been of interest to a larger number of Lasqueti people.  We'll have to assess whether it is worthwhile inviting people to come and present workshops similar to this on Lasqueti.

Here are some  of the things I learned:

The mapping was done based on helicopter flights around the islands making a video recording at low tide. I'll work to find these videos for Lasqueti, and will let you know where you can access them. Mapping from the videos was done in 50 meter blocks, with variations within these blocks noted. There were 32 different types of shorline recorded.

Many deep water species come to shore to spawn on larger sediment because this way their eggs have access to enough oxygen. On the finer sediments found in deeper water, they would get covered in fine silt and suffocate. Sediments come from erosion and movement of material by wave action. Hardening shores can be done, but it only changes the erosion processes; it doesn't stop them.

88% of Lasqueti's shoreline is hard rock, and subject to only slow erosion.

Eelgrass is growing on (or off) 13.8% of our shoreline. The majority of it is flat and continuous. The eelgrass maps for Lasqueti is on the Islands Trust Fund website, on two maps:   
http://islandstrustfund.bc.ca/media/49427/eelgrass-lasquetiw.pdf  
http://islandstrustfund.bc.ca/media/49424/eelgrass-lasquetie.pdf

A major threat to eelgrass is locating mooring buoys and anchoring boats in them.

Large, laminated copies of the three maps were left for us.  At the moment they are at the Arts Centre.  Check them out when you have a chance.  They are also on the Lasqueti page of the Trust's web site:      http://www.islandstrust.bc.ca/ltc/la/pdf/lasquetishorelinemapping.pdf

These maps "collapsed" the 32 different types of shoreline into 6 categories. There is much more variation that the maps show, but they  do give a good overview of Lasqueti's shoreline, energy & sediment movement, and values and vulnerabilities.

Those of us who live near freshwater shorelines need to live carefully and care for them. Retaining (or re-establishing) forests around waterways accomplish this.

Finally, if you want to get even more information from maps, or set of maps, it sure helps to meet, hear and talk to the people who worked on making them.