The Juan de Fuca Provincial Park is a 73 km hiking trail stretching along the western shoreline of Southern Vancouver Island. The trail offers rugged beauty, wildlife viewing and roaring surf in its course along the Pacific coastline of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The park is known for its series of tide pools which are teeming with marine species such as sea stars, anemones, mussels, barnacles, crabs and sea urchins. The serene seal grotto is a birthing den for hundreds of seals, and Northern Sea Lions frequent the park's offshore waters. The trail follows part of an old telegraph line, which was built to send messages out to assist ships in trouble. The Pacific's violent storms and huge swells often threw ships against the rocky coastline. As a result, hundreds of shipwrecks pepper the coast.