Underwater video of False Creek, Vancouver -- 'Surface' by Fiona Bowie

False Creek in Vancouver, once teeming with aquatic life, was heavily industrialized after 1880 and for more than a century was an underwater desert. All sorts of effluent was dumped from metal industries, fish canning, distilling and manufacturing until the south shore (Granville Island) was redeveloped as a tourist area in the 1970s. Birds and fish are starting to make a slow comeback.

RCAF photo of industrial False Creek in 1946: BC Archives B-07512

Fiona Bowie specializes in public art. Her current work, Surface, is a video stream from an underwater camera mounted on the hull of an Aquabus water taxi. The video stream often shows only vague colours, until crustaceans or fish swim by. It is a live uncensored documentary of the underwater life of one of the most taken-for-granted waterways in British Columbia.

See also False Creek history by the Challenge Series, and False Creek Watershed Society.