Where Does the Water Go? A Day Chasing Surface Currents in Barkley Sound  

When Nathan first explained the ocean drifter project to me, I thought I understood it. 

A drifter, as I grasped it, was essentially a floating object fitted with GPS technology. You drop it into the ocean, it follows the currents, and researchers use the data to understand how water moves through Barkley Sound. 

Interesting. 

Useful. 

Important, even. 

But if I’m being honest, it didn’t exactly strike me as the kind of assignment that would leave an indelible impression. 

Then I got on the boat. 

The day began the way some Port Alberni spring days begin. Grey skies. Light rain. A damp chill hanging in the air that somehow feels colder than the thermometer suggests.  

Two days earlier, the temperature had flirted with 30 degrees. 

Now it felt as though summer had packed its bags and quietly left town. 

Waiting at the dock were Nathan Bendriem and Cam Hepp from UTG’s Lands and Resources team, Professor Rich Pawlowicz from the University of British Columbia’s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, and Rich’s graduate student, Kelly Frank. 

There was also a giant box of donuts. 

At the time, I didn’t know that the donuts would become one of the most important pieces of equipment on the boat. 

As we loaded gear and pushed away from the dock, everything felt routine. Conversations flowed easily. The rain fell steadily. The water appeared calm enough. 

The ocean, however, was preparing to teach me a lesson. 

One of the strange things about the ocean is that it often looks simple from shore. 

A surface. 

A horizon. 

Some waves. 

What you don’t see are the invisible forces underneath. Tides. Currents. Wind. Freshwater inflows. Geography. The hidden machinery constantly moving vast amounts of water through channels, sounds, inlets, and coastlines. 

That hidden machinery was precisely what we had come to study. 

And before long, it made its presence known. 

As we traveled deeper into Barkley Sound, the water transformed. 

What had seemed calm suddenly became a chaotic collision of currents and waves. Water crashed into itself from multiple directions. The boat rose, dropped, twisted, and bounced. 

Nathan and I exchanged a series of silent glances throughout the day. 

No words were needed. 

We were both quietly bracing ourselves as the boat rose and dropped with each passing wave, continuing our preparation for the upcoming deployment. 

Meanwhile, Cam appeared entirely unfazed. 

While the rest of us were being tossed around like laundry in a washing machine, Cam calmly navigated the conditions, checked on everyone’s wellbeing, distributed ginger chews, and somehow found time to work through a collection of snacks and, as I distinctly remember, a few candy bars and sunflower seeds by the fitting brand name Spitz. 

It was impossible not to be impressed. 

Watching him maneuver through rough water, it became obvious that there is a tremendous amount of skill behind the work that many people rarely see. 

What struck me throughout the day was how ordinary this all seemed to the people doing it. 

For me, it felt like an exciting adventure. 

For them, it was just another Monday at the office. 

What made the day even more impressive was learning that these conditions were not unusual. 

Cam and Nathan explained that this stretch of water is often rough. The geography of the area can funnel winds, tides, and currents together, creating a dynamic and often challenging environment. 

Looking around at the crashing water, I found that entirely believable. 

The ocean that day was not calm. 

It was alive. 

Powerful. 

Unpredictable. 
 
And more than a little intimidating.

As we moved farther into the Sound, Rich began explaining the science behind the project. 

At its core, the work seeks to answer a deceptively simple question: 

Where does the water go? 

The question sounds straightforward until you realize how much depends on the answer. 

Every day, tides, winds, rainfall, river outflows, and ocean currents move water through Barkley Sound and beyond. Those same pathways can also transport oil, marine debris, pollutants, and other contaminants. 

When an incident occurs on the water, understanding those pathways becomes critically important. 

The challenge is that the ocean rarely behaves the way people assume it should. 

Water can become trapped in bays. 

Currents can carry floating material in unexpected directions. 

Areas that appear connected may behave very differently. 

The drifters help reveal those hidden patterns. 

Rather than trying to measure every current directly, researchers deploy specially designed surface drifters that move with the water itself. Equipped with GPS tracking technology, the drifters transmit their locations over time, creating a picture of how water travels through the region. 

For the Uchucklesaht Tribe Government, this work contributes to a growing body of knowledge that can support environmental stewardship, emergency preparedness, and future response planning. 

Or put another way: 

The project is helping answer questions today that we hope we never need to ask during a crisis. 

“We’re really trying to understand how water moves through this territory. The more we understand those pathways, the better prepared we’ll be when incidents happen and the better decisions we can make moving forward,” commented Nathan Bendriem, Fisheries Specialist at UTG 
 
As Rich pulled up maps showing previous deployments, I found myself unexpectedly captivated. 

What appeared at first to be a collection of coloured lines and coordinates was actually a story. 

Each line represented a journey. 

Some drifters travelled where researchers expected. 

Others did not. 

Some became trapped in places nobody anticipated. 

Others revealed pathways that challenged assumptions. 

The more I looked at the maps, the more I realized that the project wasn’t simply measuring currents. 

It was making the invisible visible. 

The ocean was telling a story. 

The drifters were simply translating it. 

“The ocean is constantly moving. What we’re trying to do is reveal patterns that are otherwise invisible. Once you can see those patterns, you start understanding the system in a completely different way,” commented Professor Rich Pawlowicz, a physical oceanographer with the University of British Columbia’s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. 

At one point during the roughest part of the journey, Rich casually produced a foot-long Subway sandwich and started eating lunch. 

I stared at him in disbelief. 

My own breakfast was engaged in open rebellion. 

Yet here was a man calmly enjoying a sandwich while being launched across Barkley Sound, unfazed by the vessel’s bucking and lurching or the grinding roar of waves colliding with one another. 

Kelly seemed equally unbothered. 

In fact, she wore a serene smile throughout much of the journey, seemingly surrendered to the moment. While the rest of us were negotiating with our stomachs, she appeared content to simply take it all in, the rain, the wind, and the immense power of the ocean around us. 

Eventually, I pressed her. 

“You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you?” 

She smiled and nodded. 

“I love being on boats.” 

This revelation was met with a level of skepticism normally reserved for eyewitness reports of leviathans. 

Between waves, we talked about where everyone came from and how they ended up working on the project. 

There was something remarkable about seeing people from different places and different backgrounds working together toward a common good. 

Scientists. 

Students. 

Technicians. 

Boat operators. 

Marine stewards. 

Everyone bringing different forms of knowledge to understand the same body of water. 

It felt like Two-Eyed Seeing in action. Indigenous stewardship and local knowledge working alongside Western science, each offering a different lens through which to understand the ocean, yet both focused on the same goal: protecting the waters and resources that sustain our communities. 

Eventually, after a long day navigating weather and currents, the team successfully deployed the last drifter of the project. 

Or so we thought. 

As we began heading back toward Port Alberni, it became apparent that two of the drifters had become trapped after some time in nearby bays and were no longer tracking the currents as intended.  

The ocean, once again, had its own ideas. 

As we approached one of the bays to recover a wayward drifter, Kelly and I suddenly spotted movement along the shoreline. 

A black bear. 

Then another. 

A mother and her tiny cub were making their way along the edge of the forest. 

“Bear! Lil bear! Oh my!” Kelly shouted excitedly. 

Instantly, all scientific priorities were abandoned. 

Cameras appeared. 

Phones appeared. 

For a brief moment, two grown adults became mesmerized wildlife paparazzi, like kids in a candy store. 

Kelly and I scrambled to capture photos of the bear family while quietly celebrating our luck. 

From somewhere else on the boat came Rich’s voice. 

“That is not the job!”, Rich chuckled.  

Or at least something very close to that. 

I laughed. 

Neither Kelly nor I stopped taking pictures. 

A few moments later, the bears slipped silently back into the underbrush, disappearing as quickly as they had appeared. 

And just like that, we were back to searching for the lost drifter. 

Watching the retrieval unfold was impressive. 

Cam carefully maneuvered the boat alongside steep rocky shorelines while Nathan positioned himself on the bow with a retrieval pole. Working together with Rich, they recovered the stray drifters and redeployed them into the main channel. 
 
What looked simple from a distance required patience, coordination, skill, and experience. 

In many ways, it served as a perfect metaphor for the entire project. 

Understanding the ocean is rarely as simple as it first appears. 

By the time we returned to the dock, the rain was still falling. Everyone wore the unmistakable look of accomplishment. Energized by the work, proud of what had been achieved, yet physically drained from a long day on the water. 

The boats are back at the dock now, but the work is far from over. 

Over the coming months, Rich, Kelly, Nathan, and the broader project team will begin studying the information gathered from the drifters. The tracks, coordinates, and movement patterns will help tell a more complete story of how water moves through Barkley Sound and the Maa-nulth Domestic Fishing Area. 

Once the analysis is complete, the findings will be shared with the Maa-nulth First Nations and other emergency response groups. A year of deployments, early kilometers traveled, and countless kilometers traveled across the water will be transformed into practical knowledge that can help guide future stewardship efforts. 

“One year of fieldwork is only the beginning. The real work starts when we sit down with the data and begin understanding what the ocean has been trying to tell us.”, said Rich.  

“Every deployment tells a story. You never know exactly what the ocean is going to do, and that’s part of what makes this work exciting,”said Kelly Frank, an M.Sc. Oceanography student in the Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia. 

As we unloaded equipment and said our goodbyes, I found myself reflecting on how differently I viewed the project compared to when the day began. 

I had boarded the boat thinking this story was about floating devices and ocean currents. 

I left realizing it was really about people. 

People willing to spend cold, wet days on the water. 

People willing to put themselves in uncomfortable and sometimes challenging conditions to better understand the environment around them. 

People dedicating years, and in some cases decades, to understanding coastal ecosystems. 

People building partnerships between Indigenous Nations and academic institutions. 

People investing in knowledge before it is urgently needed. 

The drifters may be the most visible part of the project. 

But behind every coordinate collected is a much larger story. 

A story about stewardship. 

A story about preparedness. 

A story about curiosity. 

And ultimately, a story about our relationship with the waters that sustain us.

 
Perhaps Cam summed it up best. 

“The ocean always reminds you who’s in charge,” chimed in Cam Hepp, Lands and Resources Technician at UTG 

The final drifter disappeared into the grey waters of Barkley Sound and began its journey. 

Somewhere beyond our sight, tides, winds, channels, and currents immediately began shaping its path. 

To most people, the ocean would look exactly the same the next day. 

But thanks to the work of Cam, Nathan, Kelly, Rich, and everyone involved in the project, we now know that beneath that familiar surface is a story constantly unfolding. 

And with every drifter deployed, we understand that story a little better. 

Story contributed by Nathan Bendriem
Written and edited by Rippon Madtha