The above photo was taken the morning of Thursday, July 17, 2008 just west of Tow Hill in the Queen Charlotte Islands, looking eastward on North Beach.

The seas were miffed that day, my friends. I was out crabbing and didn't see even one of the little buggers (to be fair, I was late that day. You want to be out about an hour before low tide).

However, the clamming was better. This fellow and his young daughter formed an excellent team:

The little girl is marking the indentations created by the clams. Dad comes along and does the digging. He has to move quickly as the clams will wriggle downward.

And success!

You can't really see it (bad photographer!) but the little girl is holding up a freshly-dug clam. The guy offered me a shovel, but I was feeling beat up after an hour of fruitless crabbing*, so I declined. They had about eight to 10 big clams when I left, which he said was enough for a meal.

* Strong winds from the north make for roiling seas, and that makes the crabbing tough. And, ahem, I got up late that day relative to the tide.

I never got the fellow's name (Dude: If you stumble over this images somehow and would like the originals emailed to you, let me know).

If you're wondering, Tow Hill is indeed an anomaly. The outcropping of basalt columns rises about 109 metres. It sits within Naikoon Provincial Park, which covers the northeastern quadrant of Graham Island. The vast majority of that area is relatively flat and even boggy.

Here's an aerial shot from Google Earth (plug this in to find Tow Hill: 54 04' 40" N, 131 47' 42" W)

The key thing to take from the above image is that virtually all of the northeast corner of Graham Island is bordered by beaches -- big, beautiful, endless, sandy beaches.

More to come ...