I sat before the television as I was idling, so instead of the computer I decided to park myself in front of my high definition to give me some entertainment, and I wanted it to be good. So with obvious apprehension, I started surfing, and as always, the channels have reruns of movies I have seen and the shows are stupid with the characters acting out incredible amount of uncouth rationalization, forget rationalization, the shows are just stupid.
So, I saw something, I saw a map, of British Columbia, and just like in google earth, it zoomed to a place, called the Great Bear something. Now, I know this place is in Canada, what fascinates me about Animal Planet and the like is how interesting life is outside the cubicle, the Tv, the 4 room apartment. And it is becoz it provided me with Nature at close encounters, something I would love to see on regular intervals, this channel pops it up in my front lawn. What comes next is supposedly the most interesting and heartening episode, where I felt a pang of guilt for what I was watching.
A couple were on an expedition with their wonderful cameraman to search for the rapidly diminishing Spirit Bears, now Spirit Bear is the cousin of the Black Bear. And the Spirit Bear is white, he is not a Polar bear though, and there are only 400 of them left in the world. This couple equipped with the best cameras in the world were striding the plains and the mountains, in their search for this soon-to-be-extinct animal. First by the riverside they spotted a grizzly bear family, and how they went for their kill. These 2 photographers and one cameraman, took such beautiful shots that you felt you were there with them, in a spell really.
They then moved on in their hunt, that's when they came by one of the streams where salmons moved against the stream to the place where they were born to reproduce. And these bears usually know how to catch them, at low tide when the river subsides the salmon are left flickering for their life. And the bears make a grab at them with their giant jaws and satiate themselves as the other salmon make way for their freedom. The narrative was so personal, as this couple opened their heart to us and how when they were incredibly awed to finally see the black bear, you felt their happiness, as they took such wonderful shots of these animals, I am an amateur photographer myself, and this show definitely made for super viewing. When finally they had the black bear on the film, that's when the Spirit bear appeared, and to their delight they were able to take great footages of the Spirit bear and the Black bear on film. It was a splendid experience, and to have seen it with one's naked eye, that is experiencing ecstasy first hand.
They didn't predict the weather too well, though. Faced with showers for 4 consecutive days, they managed to save their cameras from getting damaged, and captured a time lapse moment. What they did describe it was, a time lapse is where they capture time in its nakedness, and with every frame they capture, they suspend it and run the film in 1/4th of it's speed, so when you observe the film, you see the clouds moving in rapid forms and you experience a work of art. You experience time.
When they were done, they left the Great Bear lake and made for home, and that's when the final parting words on screen were,
300 species depend on Salmon for their survival.
The Salmon population is depleting by 60%
that's when I felt so bad at being a menacing non-vegetarian.I vow not to eat salmon ever. I hope you guys, too feel the same. But you see, you have to see it to believe it.
Here are the links to the Salmon:
Typically, salmon are anadromous: they are born in fresh water, migrate to the ocean, then return to fresh water to reproduce. Folklore has it that the fish return to the exact spot where they were born to spawn. In Alaska, the crossing-over to other streams allows salmon to populate new streams, such as those that emerge as a glacier retreats. The precise method salmon use to navigate has not been entirely established, though their keen sense of smell is involved. In all species of Pacific salmon, the mature individuals die within a few days or weeks of spawning, a trait known as semelparity. However, even in those species of salmon that may survive to spawn more than once (iteroparity), post-spawning mortality is quite high (perhaps as high as 40 to 50%.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon
and the Spirit bear:
The Kermode bear, also known as "spirit bear", is a genetically-unique subspecies of bear found in the central coast of British Columbia. Kermodeis are noted for the appearance in their gene pool of a recessive trait that gives a small percentage of their population white or cream-coloured coats. They are neither albino nor related to polar bears, instead being a color phase of the American black bear. Because of the ghostlike appearance of the bears, "spirit bears" hold a prominent place in the native mythology of the area.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_bear
