Nymphs and hurricanes

Leon Gaber collects samples from the Salmon River watershed. Photo: Erin Vieira

By Tara Sharpe

How many nymphs can you collect in a bottle? Leon Gaber found the answer while knee deep in the waters of the Salmon River in south central British Columbia testing the health and diversity of insect nymphs and the larvae of other freshwater invertebrates for his recently awarded MSc (biology).

The water wasn’t always so still for Gaber. Before moving to Victoria in winter 2004, he had left his hometown of Winnipeg in 2001 to travel the world and was living in the Cayman Islands when Hurricane Ivan struck in September 2004. The aquatic life on the islands was completely destroyed.

“The sea just rose up,” remembers Gaber, whose house was situated on the main island, Grand Cayman. “Our home was under 8 to 10 feet of water for 2 days. Winds were gusting over 200 miles per hour, every single telephone pole was snapped like a twig and we could hear the elevators going crazy [in the five-storey building where he and his fiancée had taken refuge]. Meanwhile, all the fresh water streams were flooded with salt water.”

According to Gaber, environmental philosophy on the Cayman Islands seemed rare at best. Although he loved his time at the 19th parallel, the highest point on Grand Cayman was a garbage dump and there was no organized recycling program. Post-hurricane restoration of the island ecosystems was unlikely to receive anywhere near the level of attention Gaber has now paid to just a handful of BC’s watersheds. In 2007, he received a Pacific Leaders Graduate Fellowship from the provincial government to test the effectiveness of agricultural best management practices for healthy water, and his work continues now with the Water Stewardship Division of BC’s Ministry of Environment.

He and his fiancée lost everything in the hurricane, and they headed west to Victoria after returning to Canada for their October 2004 wedding. Gaber had taken a basic ecology course during his undergraduate studies in agroecology at the University of Manitoba and “as soon as I put some hip waders on and collected a bunch of bugs, I was hooked,” he says.

That meant the research being conducted by UVic aquatic ecologist Dr. Asit Mazumder (biology), head of the NSERC Research Chair Program on the environmental management of drinking water, was as perfect a fit as those hip waders.
And at least in BC, Gaber doesn’t have to watch the weather forecast with a sense of dread for either himself or the insect larvae that he continues to study.