A slide show by Ron Bellamy of Sooke August 2018
Monthly Archives: September 2018
Another Elephant
Weather
- Visibility: 15 Miles
- Wind: 0-10 SW
- Sky: Cloudy, patches of fog
- Water:Â Flat Calm
Boats/Visitors
- Some boat traffic around, mostly ecotours
Maintenance
- had to run the generator for a few hours today because there was no sunlight coming through those clouds
Ecological
- the sea lions are taking up that area between the guest house and the generator room, seems to be more and more of them everyday
- there is another female elephant seal, shes bigger than the first one that showed up and more calm, she doesn’t look like she is molting as bad as the first one
Census, rain and whales
Weather
- Visibility: 15 Miles
- Wind: 5-15 NW
- Sky: Overcast
- Water: Flat calm
Boats/Visitors
- Quite a bit of boat traffic, most of it being whale watching tours
- Guy came by with a couple more boat loads of students to give them a tour around the island
Maintenance
- Â Didn’t have to do any pressure washing today thanks to the rain although I did have to run the generator a bit to make up for not getting any solar energy today
Ecological
- An elephant seal showed up yesterday and she is still around today, so thats exciting
- also there have been a few humpback whale sightings and Guy said he saw some killer whales on the way over here but I missed them unfortunately
- plenty of sea lions, seems like there is more everyday
- not as many gulls as last week and I haven’t seen any cormorants on the outer rocks today
Census
- stellar sea lions – 132
- california sea lions – 314
- harbour seals – 94
- gulls – 261
- elephant seals – 1 female
- black turnstones – 12
- fox sparrows – 2
New Students
Weather
- Visibility: 15 Miles
- Wind: 0-10 NW
- Sky: Clear
- Water:Â Flat Calm
Boats/Visitors
- Quite a bit of boat traffic, many ecotours, fishing boats and sailboats
- Guy brought by a couple boat loads of the new first year students, as he did yesterday so we could give them a little tour of Race Rocks, its great when the students get to come out here and see another aspect of Pearson College, they don’t come out here that often and you can’t see it from the college
Maintenance
- having some camera issues lately, will need to order a new SD card for the Race Rocks camera and the one in personal camera is not cooperating either, but hopefully we will be able to get more photos up soon
Ecological
- still around 300 sea lion, mostly californias around the island.
- plenty of harbour seals on the outer rocks, a few on the main island
- also a few whale sightings, I saw two humpbacks by north rock yesterday morning and Guy said he also saw killer whales near there when he came he around 9:30am yesterday.
- Also one of the younger seagulls I posted a photo of last week is dead, not quite sure what happened, just its body by the pathway
- there are still about 4 of the younger ones all together
Its been an eventful week and hopefully I can start taking pictures again soon :)