As he approached the fog-shrouded cliffside, photographer Ryan Tidman began to notice specks of black breaking through the low-hanging cloud. Drawing closer, he realized he was seeing a natural wonder — thousands upon thousands of common murres circling the island as they prepared to nest. Though a mere dot in the ocean 45 kilometres off the northern tip of Vancouver Island, Triangle Island is home to more than two million birds. It’s in what’s officially called Anne Vallée (Triangle Island) Ecological Reserve, after a researcher who died there in 1982.

Tidman, who says he has “loved all things in nature” since he was a kid, studied environmental sciences at the University of Guelph and visual communications at the Royal Ontario Museum. Now a photographer documenting Canada’s most iconic animals and landscapes, he has been captivated by Triangle Island since first spotting it in the distance while sailing past on an expedition to the Great Bear Rainforest. “It’s Game of Thrones-esque,” he explains, “truly a surreal place.”

The ecological reserve is off-limits to visitors (only a few researchers are permitted to land each year) so Tidman captured these photos from a catamaran anchored offshore. He visited three times over the last few summers, “parking” for two- or three-week stints to collect footage for a National Geographic documentary for Disney+ about the island’s Steller sea lion rookery. But in his spare time, he focussed on the seabirds — auklets and puffins, guillemots and gulls, cormorants and murres. The island is home to the largest and most diverse seabird colony in B.C. — a noisy and frenetic place where the action takes place in the air, on the land and in the sea.

Follow him on Instagram @ryantidman.