Originally published, as part 3 of the Cortes Island Resonance series by the Cortes Community Radio Society.

In 1995, standing on a Cortes Island shoreline with fellow environmental advocate Delores Broten, Sabina Leader Mense agreed to launch something that had never been done before on the island: a long-term monitoring project for its rocky intertidal zones. “Delores said, ‘We really need to get onto monitoring the marine environment.’ And I said, ‘Okay,’” Mense recalls.

That conversation marked the beginning of FOCI’s very first marine stewardship initiative, The Cortes Island Foreshore Monitoring Program (CIFMP) and today, nearly three decades later, it remains one of the longest-running environmental monitoring programs in the Strait of Georgia.

The First Ten Years: Building a Baseline

By 1996, nine permanent transect lines had been established around the island. Three more were added in 1997, bringing the total to twelve research sites. Mense surveyed these sites during the lowest tides of the summer, using standardized quadrat methods to track species presence and abundance at different tidal elevations.

Looking at marine vegetaion at low tide. The squares of a quadrant are spread out over the surface. — Quadrat along a transect line at a low tide site

These data points—meticulously recorded on paper sheets—laid a foundational baseline for understanding ecological change in the island’s intertidal zones.

2006 Onward: Citizen Science Takes the Helm

In 2006, FOCI passed the torch to the community through the Adopt-A-Transect program. Each of the twelve sites was “adopted” by volunteers who returned annually to gather data following a simplified but rigorous protocol.

“This is a 100% volunteer program,” says Sabina Leader Mense. “We’re not at the whims of somebody deciding to fund us or not. People take pride in contributing to the long-term monitoring and they’re making us aware of what’s happening.”

Early volunteer Carol Tidler remembers the experience as transformative:

“To this day, I never look at a beach in the same way… Now I’m very aware of where the seaweed lines are and all the things that are growing there or not.”

*Sabina Leader Mense showing some of the data shared with the Strait of Georgia Data Center in 2020*

Data That Endures

Over 25 years of continuous data collection have made this project the most comprehensive foreshore baseline in the Strait of Georgia. In 2020, during the pandemic, FOCI passed its hard copy data to Isobel Pearsall at the Strait of Georgia Data Center. It was a “gloves-on” transfer, carefully left on Pearsall’s Nanaimo porch.

Now, the data is being digitized and entered into the University of British Columbia’s master database, supported by the Pacific Salmon Foundation. “There’s a student at UBC entering our sheets into the data bank,” Mense noted. “This is a real success story for community science.”

Discoveries and Stability

Though formal statistical analysis has yet to be done, the long-term consistency in the data has offered reassuring news.

“We have not [seen major changes], and that’s good news,” said Mense. “We’re not seeing any shifts in seaweed species or drastic changes in abundance year over year. We are monitoring for those things, especially as climate change warms coastal waters.”

*130 million year old fossil specimen of the ancient bivalve clam in the genus Buchia*

The foreshore team did make one remarkable discovery in May 2020: a fossilized specimen of a 130-million-year-old Buchia bivalve clam at the Coulter Bay site. Such finds remind volunteers—and the community—of the deep history encoded in these shorelines.

Why It Matters

In a world where ecosystems are changing faster than most people can track, FOCI’s foreshore program provides a rare, continuous record of environmental stability—and potential warning signs. It also fosters a new generation of environmental stewards.

“Cortes has been recognized as having the longest standing record of environmental monitoring in the Strait of Georgia,” Mense added. “Our very first program, one of our most prominent programs, is now being acknowledged for the long-term efforts we put into it.”

The Cortes Island Resonance Series:

All Photos courtesy FOCI website

The Cortes Island Resonance series is produced with financial assistance provided by the Strathcona Regional District ‘s Grant In Aid Program and the Cortes Island Community Foundation.

Cortes Currents

30 Years of Foreshore Monitoring on Cortes Island