The Nature of Things peers into intertidal worlds of Canada's coastline
Credit to Author: Dana Gee| Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2020 19:00:28 +0000
When: Feb. 7 at 9 p.m.
Where: CBC and streaming on CBC Gem.
If you have had the pleasure of picking your way through the intertidal waters of the Pacific Ocean or the Salish Sea, you have surely encountered many locals of the skittering, scattering and stick to the rocks variety.
The watery wonders that live in shallows are stars in the upcoming The Nature of Things episode Kingdom of the Tide.
While many of us West Coasters recognize these creatures, we really don’t know them much beyond a point of a finger and an “oh look a….”
For instance, that bright orange sea star (a.k.a. the animal formerly known as a starfish) is not just an elegant echinoderm. Nope, we learn in the CBC show that sea stars are stone-cold, life-sucking killers that use their strong tube feet to pry open a mussel and then send their stomach membranes through their mouths into the shell to basically suck up the mussel. Yup.
Or how about the unassuming, omnipresent barnacle? Next time you spot a cluster of the tiny arthropods consider this: the little hermaphroditic filter feeder can have a penis up to eight times the length of its body. — the longest penis to body length ratio in the animal kingdom. Take that, blue whales.
It’s this life-packed part of the ecosystem that inspired the episode’s host Sarika Cullis-Suzuki — daughter of long time regular show host David Suzuki — to go into marine biology.
David Suzuki says when his daughter Sarika Cullis-Suzuki was young she spent a lot of her time in the tide pools of Quadra Island. Photo by Marianna Massey/Sustainable Living Festival via Getty Images.
In a recent phone interview Suzuki said his youngest daughter “was always up to her elbows in the tide pools,” when she was a kid.
“I can literally remember when I was six years old and I was walking along the shore and I turned to my mom (Tara Cullis) and I said: ‘I’m going to be a marine biologist, and you can be my assistant,’” said Cullis-Suzuki, 35, remembering one of the many summertime shoreline walks she did as a child on Quadra Island.
“I remember that. So for me it was never, ‘oh what am I going to do?’ I just knew. Along the way people were like: ‘don’t do that. You’re never going to get a job in marine biology,’ but I wasn’t even thinking about a job. I was thinking about what I was interested in, so it was kind of a direct line for me.”
That direct line lead to a PhD and a multi-platform science media career that includes the three-part CBC series the Suzuki Diaries, as well as the Kingdom of the Tide and another Nature of Things episode called Listening to Orcas (Feb. 21 on CBC). There is also a podcast in the works.
Sarika Culls-Suzuki, daughter of David Suzuki, is a marine biologist based in Victoria.
“I finished my thesis a few years ago and I was kind of frustrated by academia by the end. Mostly it was the glacial pace at which it works,” said Cullis-Suzuki over the phone from a Victoria coffee shop.
“Science kind of has to work that way, but I kind of felt like what is happening right now with the environment really needed some urgency and so I decided to move away a little bit from my regular work to do environmental media, which it is why it was so wonderful to do these two The Nature of Things documentaries.”
Cullis-Suzuki and her older sister Severn have grown up with an understanding of media; first from their father, then Severn became an international name when at age 12 she gave a speech that was heard around the world at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Suzuki, 83, has been the host of The Nature of Things since 1979, but he has mentioned in other media that he likes the idea of his daughters sharing the host role when he retires. Cullis-Suzuki says the sisters have never been pushed toward the camera with the word legacy looming large.
“He has always said do what you want to do. I think, of course, there is a feeling that it would be nice, but it is ultimately not up to him,” said Cullis-Suzuki, who is busy with her husband raising a five year old son and two-year-old twins (a boy and a girl) in Victoria.
“If you would have asked him 20 years ago if he thought he’d be doing The Nature of Things for this long, I’m sure he would have said no.”
Suzuki agrees, and says he sees the benefit, especially now in the era of Greta Thunberg, of a younger host for the show.
“I think a lot of young people identify more with a young person, and when you have a young woman who can speak well I think that can make more of impact than this old guy, you know, standing around with white hair,” said Suzuki.
David Suzuki with his daughter Sarika Cullis-Suzuki in 2008.
Cullis-Suzuki said doing The Suzuki Diaries helped her to understand her own childhood — one that involved hanging off her father’s legs as he tried to leave on another work trip.
“He started hosting in 1979, the year my older sister was born. So literally growing up he was away for a ton of my childhood because he was filming, and (when) I finally got to see what he was doing in that time spent away from home, I couldn’t believe how hard he worked. I was in my 20s and I was: ‘geez we’re up at 4 a.m. and not going to eat until 2 p.m., what?’ He never complained,” she said
Now Cullis-Suzuki knows what it is like to be away from her young family for weeks at a time. But in a cool twist her dad is sometimes the one at home.
“My dad helps out a ton, he is an amazing grandparent,” said Cullis-Suzuki.
“Actually, when I was filming this summer for the Orca show, he and my mom, and my husband of course, they took care of my kids when I was gone for almost three weeks. They really rolled up their sleeves and supported me. That was only way I could have done it.”
Cullis-Suzuki, who travelled the B.C. coast and to the Bay of Fundy for the Kingdom of the Tide episode, is upbeat and easy with a laugh, and that affability comes across on TV. Watching her tug her hardest on an unmoving piece of kelp or listen intently to an expert explain the house hopping ways of hermit crabs and it’s easy to see a bit of the kid that fell in love with the ocean all those years ago.
As for fatherly TV tips, Cullis-Suzuki said her dad was helpful but not overbearing when it came to passing on advice from his four decades in front of a camera.
“The only thing he said — and I’m not even kidding — he said ‘be yourself and listen’,” she said. “From listening, that’s where questions will come.”
Cullis-Suzuki said that when people find out her lineage they often lean in with a very familiar query.
“It’s funny when people say: Iis it weird having David Suzuki as your dad?’
“Well, no — because I don’t know any other dad. It’s normal for me,” she said. “But it is great when people come up to me and say: ‘your father changed my life,’ or ‘your father, I watch his show with my kids.’”
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