The tide in coming in the grizzly bears of Glendale Cove on Knight Inlet move off the beach where they have been turning over rock looking for protein rich food. Because our schedule enables us to spend a day in the Glendale River estuary at sometime there will be a low tide to bring the bears onto the beach. If we arrive at high tide we first spend time up the river in the tall sedge grass where the bears tend to graze and as the tide drops we leave the river and move along the inter-tidal zone while the bears search for “beach food”. This August photo taken by Marc and Solange Edouard from France shows this year’s cub, about seven months old.
Comparing this photo with the posting of December 5th it is obvious that they are the same bears but the background is different. In the background of this photo are more than a dozen dead salmon. This summer was an extremely dry with no rain for several months. The lack of rain meant that the Glendale River was lower than normal and Tom Brown lake that feeds the river was much warmer than normal the result was a very low oxygen level in the water and many dead salmon. The dead salmon count was several thousand but many of the late arriving salmon stayed in the bay at the mouth of the river so when the rains came in October so did more salmon.