Water Highways

Pouring over SeaTrails maps, dreaming of future expeditions, sometimes I think and wonder about the Sound's channels and passages and how they function as water highways for life both above and below the water's surface. 

As paddlers, boaters, and captains, we obviously use channels for navigation. Air pilots use waterways as reference points as they travel above the Salish Sea.

But what about the natural world? I'm talking about schools of fish utilizing the swift currents and high velocities of passages to travel and, following plankton and smaller fish, feed in nutrient-rich upwellings. And harbor seals and porpoises following those schools of fish. What about whales, orcas and others, following fish and seals? It seems like channels are food chain conveyor belts. Do pelagic jellyfish find themselves carried in channels' currents? Are birds using waterways to track their migration? And what about the other life on the bottom? I'm sure that some of these questions, perhaps most of them, can be answered by researchers, each studying one minute piece of the greater puzzle. It just seems that so much is always happening when we find our gaze looking out over the water's horizon. There's a big, wild world down there - it's good to remember that we aren't the only ones using those channels and passages.