The other day the wind was whipping and the ocean was crazily choppy. Not the kind of conditions in which you’d expect to look out your window and see someone kayaking out in the middle of the Sound. Alone. Dwarfed by whitecaps. My older son got out the binoculars. “I think he went over,” he said. “But I can’t see him anymore; he’s passed behind a tree.”
I got in the car with my younger one and we headed toward a little dock to get a better vantage point. Almost there, we saw a guy standing in clothes on the side of the road with a small dry bag. I passed, thinking he couldn’t be the one. How could he have made it to shore and dressed so quickly?
I backed up and lowered the passenger window. “We were just watching someone kayaking out there. Was that you?” I asked. “Yeah. But I’m on a stand-up paddle board, not a kayak. Usually a friend comes with me and we start way down the Sound and let the wind push us into Eastsound, but he couldn’t come today. We have someone pick us up when we get here,” he explained. “Oh. My son thought you went over, so we came to make sure you were okay when we couldn’t see what happened,” I said. “Oh yeah, I go over all the time. Thanks for looking out for me.” I couldn’t believe he had blown in so quickly and even had time to get dressed!
This isn’t the norm for most residents here on the island. But whether you’re a hearty ocean-braver with a 5-millimeter wetsuit or more the type to read by the window all winter long, the ocean is a staple of all of our lives. We observe all its faces and forces every time we walk to school or drive to the store. Kids parallel it in school buses and are surrounded by it on the ferry to away games. And lots of people simply park by it for a lunch break from their day jobs or as a life break to listen to music in their cars.
I think that’s why Ocean Night has become such a big hit each month at the Sea View Theatre. It’s filling the house, surprisingly much more so than the weekend movies do. People here apparently love the ocean, no matter how they experience it. Perhaps it’s easier to feel stewardship of it when you’re on a little island and you feel like it’s yours. Families, couples, young people, old people, scientists – gosh, we’ve seen just about every type at Ocean Night.
Over the years during the dark winter months, The SeaDoc Society has put on a “Lecture Series” at Camp Orkila. It’s been an interesting, intellectual way to get out of the house on cold, rainy nights. But perhaps their switch to “Ocean Night” right in town, in the larger venue of the theatre, which has more of a feel of entertainment, and with more of a focus on multi-media – interactive slide shows and short films shown on the big screen – has more of a draw. It’s been gaining exponential momentum since the first one this season.
We don’t have a whole lot to do at night here. There are a few bars and a handful of restaurants open past 5 o’clock. That’s it. SeaDoc is filling a niche for those of us who like intellectual and eye-catching entertainment. Or perhaps for those who like anything besides sitting at home. Personally, I love that it’s drawing a crowd larger than the movies draw. (No offense, movies, I love movies too!) To me, that says a lot about the people here.
Ocean Night is one Wednesday each month from 7-8 PM. They keep them short, and you end up wanting more.
The first one, in November, featured funny Dr. Adam Summers, the science advisor for Pixar’s Finding Nemo and Finding Dory. It was an evening of laugh-out-loud accounts of how he and the animators turned gnarly scientific anatomy, which he showed on the big screen, into laughable, lovable movie characters. I think I was expecting more of a drier, shyer lecturer. That he was not. He was comfortable on stage, quick-witted, and made me laugh a lot.
We could barely physically get into the second Ocean Night in December. My sister was visiting from Texas and we lost track of time. We left much later than planned and we squeezed like sardines through bodies to the entrance, then saw that we couldn’t get a seat in the packed-full theatre. There were already lines of folding chairs taken and lines of standing people. I’d never seen our theatre that way. Kids I didn’t think were even remotely interested in nature were there. Then my sister said, “I bet you every science teacher on the island is giving extra credit for their students to come tonight.” Aha. We had never even seen the parking lot like that, too. You’d have thought it was a world premier of a major new Hollywood movie here on little Orcas. All of us without normal red theatre seats had to be turned away due to fire code, understandably. I think about 50 or more of us poured out, disheartened. So we missed the screening of Florian Graner’s underwater documentary, Beneath the Salish Sea. But I was really happy to see the islanders come out en masse for such a thing.
The latest Ocean Night, three nights ago on the 9th, didn’t sound flashy so I wondered if the number of audience members would wane. As the time got closer, I was feeling cozy at home. I had just tried on some new, soft jammies my sister had sent me, which gave me a good bit of inertia. We wavered about whether to go. At 6:57, three minutes before the presentation, our younger, animal-loving boy gasped at the idea that we weren’t moving. Seeing as we don’t usually miss this kind of thing, I threw my long skirt over my jammy pants and my down jacket over my jammy shirt, tucking it in so no one would suspect my fashion faux pas. We barely found two open seats.
Am I glad we went. I will not almost miss another Ocean Night. Writer and photographer (and lots of other “ers”) Bob Friel and SeaDoc Science Director (and probably lots of other “ors,” “ians,” and “ists”) Joe Gaydos presented the most endearing and whimsical look at Steller sea lions with the underwater documentary they filmed off Hornby Island, off the coast of Vancouver, British Columbia.
Like my son, I love animals too. This short film of them cavorting under the water with these curious, puppy-like creatures, called Steller Sea Lions, Grizzlies of the Sea, accompanied by the anecdotes told by Gaydos and Friel, was heart-warming and hilarious.
I hated to come home and tell my husband and older son what they had missed, so I was glad to report that SeaDoc now has a YouTube channel called Salish Sea Wild, on which they have posted this film and will continue posting their upcoming films. So you can see it too…
For a description of their upcoming Ocean Nights, visit SeaDoc’s site. Don’t miss them!
Photograph of Steller sea lion by Bob Friel
