Description
The Pacific Lingcod : Ophiodon elongatus
These long fish grow to more than five feet (1.5 meters) and range from Alaska to Baja California. Lingcod feed voraciously on various large fishes, crustaceans and mollusks. This predator fish is one of the most highly esteemed sport fish in the Pacific owing to it’s great taste. Commercial fishing has dwindled numbers to alarming levels. When I started painting these two their colouring and its patterns started to look like the deer I see daily here on Gabriola Island. One buck used to lie outside my studio every afternoon like a statue.These deer are:
Columbian blacktail deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus)
These are our Pacific Northwest deer and are found throughout the San Juan Islands, Gulf Islands and Queen Charlotte Islands and all along our coast up until about as far north as Prince Rupert. The males can range in shoulder height from 75cm.- 90cm. And weigh from 45kilos (100lbs.) to 90kilos (200lbs.) They have no predators on most of the small islands and so tend to be over populated and of a smaller size. They will eat almost every type of native vegetation and almost anything you plant with few exceptions.