Barkley Sound, part 3 Turtle Bay

For all the islands in Barkley, there are only a few good anchorages.  Turtle Island has one of them.  But whether or not they provide a good spot to drop the hook, a fun thing about all those other islands is that they are close to where you can anchor and they are usually small enough to row around easily.  Dodd Island is one of those islands just off Turtle Island.

Old First Nations fish trap at low tide.
Farther in the fish trap.
Pool of the fish trap.
Nina standing in front of the fish trap.

One of the amazing features of Dodd Island is an old First Nations fish trap.  The edges are lined with rocks and it’s still easy to imagine how at high tide the fish would have been channeled into the pool at the end. Simple and brilliant at the same time.

Rocks and oysters.
Other fauna basking on the rocks. The best field guide we had onboard was the Audubon Field Guide to the Pacific Northwest. It’s a good, general guide but doesn’t go into much detail about different species. Best as we can tell, some kind of garter snake.
A knot of garter snakes basking.

After checking out the island, we got back in the dinghy and rowed around the island.  The shore is pretty rocky and we saw lots of sea stars and quite a few crabs.  It was exciting seeing bat stars, which we hadn’t seen before, and ochre and purple stars.  A couple of years ago the sea stars were hit by a virus that almost wiped them out.  It was good to see them coming back again.  We also saw a sea cucumber.

Bill dinghy
Bill sailing the dinghy around the anchorage at Turtle Island.  Bill went sailing.  Nina made brownies.

After a relaxing night at anchor, we headed back to Ucluelet for groceries and laundry.

9 thoughts on “Barkley Sound, part 3 Turtle Bay”

  3. We have fond memories of Turtle Bay. It was a date: Tuesday at Turtle Bay for Velic and Wind Rose. And years before with Envoy. A great spot. Granite rock, Cedar boughs hanging to the high water line, and Salal so dense you couldn’t walk across the islands.

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