This article is from the summer 2024 edition of Coast Life magazine.
The first time Tom McPherson saw a sea wolf, others didn’t believe his eyes. He was working on a tour company’s sailboat that had just pulled into an anchorage near Bella Bella, when he saw wolves come down onto the beach. He yelled out to alert the clients, but someone said they were just dogs playing. Brand new to the crew, McPherson didn’t push back. But when they later paddled a creek, the animals reappeared on the creek bank—this time, there could be no doubt that they were wolves. The moment brought relief and redemption to the young guide.
Years later, a business advisor told McPherson his plans to launch his own tour company, Seaforth Expeditions, focused on sea wolves were “crazy.” No one else was offering tours around sea wolves, because it was considered too risky. Not because of the proximity to wolves, but due to their elusive nature—offering a reliable tour would be challenging.
But McPherson stayed steadfast, and poured his energy and previous experience with wildlife into understanding sea wolves and how they navigate their territory. He set up remote trail cameras and hiked until his legs would take him no further.
“It was a huge undertaking to really get to understand them. It’s taken many years and many trips. I’m still learning. Everytime I go out there, I usually learn something new about them, and another little aspect of their behaviour will get revealed to me,” McPherson said.
Seaforth Expeditions was also one of the first tour companies to showcase the annual herring spawn.
“It’s a time of year when the wildlife on the coast gets concentrated into small areas, and you have an opportunity to not only see the spectacle of the spawn and the water changing—amazing blues and greens and even white—you have all the wildlife that gets drawn in on top of that.” McPherson spent his early years on the west coast of Vancouver Island, so returning to work in the region “was almost like coming home.”
Now going into his fifth year of following one pack, it’s thanks in no small part to McPherson that millions of people have seen sea wolves up close, though most of them have watched the genetically distinct species from their own homes, likely dry and warm and with food at the ready.
Comfort and convenience are not luxuries McPherson and his clients have, and it’s a fact McPherson makes well known to the people he takes on board: all who join must be able to carry their own camera gear for up to two kilometres over boulders or sand or mud (or all three). They’ll be ready to embark at first light.
The only guarantee of coastal weather of western Vancouver Island is that it’s ever changing. They may sit in photo blinds, small tents that camouflage photographers into their surroundings, until dark. Naps are recommended.
“You just can’t physically match the schedule that the wolves are on,” McPherson said. Throughout, they will make every effort not to intrude upon the wolves, and to reduce their presence as much as possible.
Just as McPherson’s new tours were gearing up, COVID restrictions were shutting nonessential travel down. But due to the remote nature of his operations, and with the support of local First Nations, Seaforth Expeditions was able to keep the cameras rolling. “We were isolated in the wilderness,” he said, far from other humans.
McPherson was able to rely on his bushcraft skills—cooking, camping, lighting fires, getting water that was safe to drink and tracking ability—to cut down on the number of people on his tours. The rest of the work of following sea wolves “comes down to gut instincts,” he said. “Learning to anticipate their next move, which you can only do through observation.”
McPherson sets his clients up for the shot, and the rest is up to them. Photographers and filmmakers who’ve joined his tours have landed articles in Canadian Geographic, won Emmys, and exhibited at the Museum of Natural History in Ottawa. Playing a part in their success “just energizes my passion for the work I do,” McPherson says, “I’ve had many grown men come to tears when they see a sea wolf for the first time. And I’ve also had some of those men nearly in tears at the struggles that they’ve had to endure to get to get that.”
There’s no archetypal lone wolf here, in the pack or on the tour. McPherson sees part of his role as a myth dispeller.
“Wolves are one of the most misunderstood animals that humans interact with, which is ironic when you consider our love of our dogs.
“Sea wolves are particularly interesting, because they have very little impact on humans. They’re occupying this fringe of coastline that is almost entirely uninhabited by humans.” The sea wolf is a unique subspecies that plays a crucial role. Whenever they eat something from the sea — sea otters, fish or seals — the nutrients from any leftovers are carried from the ocean into the near shore ecosystem. Like nurse logs, the bones and flesh of a sea wolf’s catch adds another layer of organic matter to the forest.
“I hope that my work is telling a story that shows wolves in a very different light than how people are brought up to view them. The myth of the Big Bad Wolf is exactly that—it’s a myth,” McPherson said. He’s found the wolves to be timid and shy yet intrinsically connected. “It’s like a spider’s web inside the undergrowth. It’s unbelievably complicated,” McPherson says of the wolves’ habitat. But he pushes into the woods, past his limit, with his intuition as his guide. His gut instinct has led him to discover a sea wolf den, capturing never-before-seen footage. Beyond his work with filmmakers and photographers, McPherson has teamed up with a research project that will collect and analyze the DNA of the sea wolves. “I’m quite happy to be starting to contribute to the scientific community and create an opportunity to learn more about them,” he said.
Once he wraps up a tour, McPherson finds his way back home to the Sunshine Coast. There, he’s surrounded by another kind of coastal beauty, inspiration and guidance from local photographers such as Dolf Vermeulen, and, of course, his own family. McPherson is, after all, one of a pack.
