My Bucket List: Photograph a Spirit Bear

September 21, 2022 Gribbell Island British Columbia. I have travelled extensively shooting wildlife and landscapes. The top of my bucket list was to photograph Spirit Bears. The Kermode bear, sometimes called the spirit bear, is a subspecies of the American black bear and lives in the Central and North Coast regions of British Columbia, Canada. It is the official provincial mammal of British Columbia and symbol of Terrace, British Columbia. While most Kermode bears are black, between 100 and 500 fully white individuals exist. White Kermode bears are not albinos, as they still have pigmented skin and eyes.[2][6] Rather, a single, nonsynonymous nucleotide substitution in the MC1R gene causes melanin to not be produced.[6] This mutant gene is recessive, so Kermode bears with two copies of this mutant, nonfunctional gene appear white, while bears with one copy or no copies appear black. I was fortunate enough to book a space on the Ocean Light (living on the boat for a few days). We would take a Zodiac to Gribbell Island when the salmon were spawning and just hung out on the shore of a creek while the Bears (in this case “Warrior”) would wander up and down the creek, catching and chowing down on Salmon – and during those six weeks, could care less about us quietly sitting on the site of the creek taking their pix. I have thousands of images but this one is framed and hanging over our fireplace so I can re-live that jaw dropping moment.
Gribbell Island is an island on the North Coast of British Columbia, Canada, located on the east side of the entrance to Douglas Channel at Wright Sound. Gribble Island Indian Reserve No. 10 is on its west coast, between Verney Passage and Ursula Channel at 53°21′00″N 129°08′00″W.