A male lingcod guards his mate’s egg mass in a glass sponge reef bioherm, in Howe Sound. This image is taken from a frame grab from video shot by Roy Mulder.
I am very pleased to say that the trailer/short film version of This Living Salish Sea was accepted at the Halifax Ocean Film Festival, screened on June 15, 2014. Also, veteran diver, Roy Mulder’s short film, Cradles of Glass, was shown on this same date. http://internationaloceaninstitute.dal.ca/FilmFest.htm
Roy Mulder contributes Glass Sponge Reef footage!
I am also very happy that Roy Mulder has shared some of his beautiful glass sponge reef footage with me for my film. This is a very significant contribution, since the deep dives to document the reefs require a great deal of planning and safety protocols and each dive may only result in a few minutes of video, and possibly only a few seconds of screenable footage. Roy Mulder is the president of the Marine Life Sanctuaries Society. For more info go to: http://www.mlssbc.com. Thank you Roy!
Roy’s website: (www.uwvideo1webs.com)
Glass sponge reefs, millions of years ago, formed the largest living structures on the planet, and had been thought extinct. However, these reef formations were recently discovered on B.C.’s north coast, (to the astonishment of paleo-biologists and other scientists). More recently, more reefs have been discovered right here in the Salish Sea basin, including Howe Sound, where Roy Mulder and his colleagues have been doing citizen research to document this uniquely rare and rich habitat. Last year, I had the opportunity to film Doctor Manfred Krautter, geologist and palaeontologist, Professor at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, give a talk to the Sunshine Coast Conservation Assocication, on the subject of these glass sponge reefs. Previous to the discoveries of living reefs off the B.C. Coast, he had known these sponges only from fossil records, and on his first dive down to see them, he said, “it was like looking at living dinosaurs”!
