Mike Moore obviously has an intense passion for the ocean and for the waters around Cortes Island in particular. He has been working on the water or under it for more than 40 years, as a commercial halibut, crab and prawn fisherman, as a diver harvesting sea cucumbers, sea urchins, scallops and the giant pacific octopus, as a Navigation Officer with the Canadian Coast Guard for 11 years and finally, along with Samantha Statton, he was owner/ operator of Misty Isles Adventures, Cortes Island’s kayaking and passenger schooner tourism business, which was the vessel by which many tourists and locals got to appreciate Cortes as an island, seen from the water.
Many of you are probably aware that Cortes Island’s best known schooner has changed hands. After twenty-one years of showing tourists around our area, Mike Moore and Samantha Statton are retiring. I recently met with the Misty Isles new owners, Amy Bockner and Jonas Fineman, outside the Co-op in Mansons Landing.
In the summer of 2016, a subsidiary of one of the world’s leading aggregate companies announced it was about to commence exploratory surface drilling in the Lloyd Creek Area of Desolation Sound. This is in close proximity to the region’s foremost kayak and boating area and, consequently, brings a substantial income to local businesses. Had the venture gone forward, one of the regions few remaining old growth forests would have been cut down, an important fish bearing creek would have been devastated and a number of important indigenous sites would have been threatened. Lehigh Hanson Materials abandoned its application, but local author Judith Williams talks about a new threat to Desolation Sound.
What was life like in the era before cell phones, computers and televisions. Did British Columbians feel closer to nature when they worked outside in the elements rather than within the artificial confines of a building? In this mornings program I ask Mike Manson, a descendant of one of Cortes Island’s oldest European families, and Mike Moore, one of our better known eco-tour guides, how public attitudes towards nature changed since the first settlers arrived.
A thriving ecotourism sector has grown up in the twenty years since logging ruled over British Columbia’s economy. One of the foremost voices in the Discovery Island area is Mike Moore, whose sailboat the Misty Isleshas been touring these waters since 1997. This is the first program taken from a long conversation about ecotourism and what the Misty Isles offers ecotourists.
