Water rough, waves to half a metre with some whitecaps
Boats/Visitors:
No visitors today
The whale watching boats continue to decrease in volume, this month looks to be a turning point in their season.
Ecological:
We spotted the sea lion with plastic around its neck on the jetty last night, and today it was hauled out onto land between the helicopter pad and the guest house. We contacted DFO, and the entanglement response team will assess if it’s a job that they can do.
This afternoon we saw a blue heron, which we haven’t seen before out here.
Maintenance:
The Coast Guard visited briefly a few days ago. They stayed on RR for about an hour and did some maintenance on the fog horn system. Two people came on to land, and a third stayed in the Coast Guard zodiac.
(1) The entangled sea lion on the jetty.
(2) The offending material looks like it may be polypropylene strap, the kind used when packing and shipping large boxes.
(3) It looks like it hurts.
Working on the fog horn.
The coast guard vessel.
A large sea lion defends its position from the highest part of a rock.
A small seal in front of the boat shed.
It doesn’t seem to mind resting with the larger sea lions.
No visitors today, but on Sunday Corey drove us back to Race Rocks with some more water as we were having troubles getting our boat to start.
There have not been many whale watching boats but when they are here they often get quite close to the sea lions (within 10m). We can tell when there is a boat present in the reserve by the increase in “barking” and distressed sounds that the sea lions make.
Ecological:
Over the weekend a sea lion was spotted with some fishing line wrapped around its neck. We believe that it could be the same one spotted last year. As it grows it will likely die due to slow suffocation caused by the line. Unfortunately it’s virtually impossible to have someone come to tranquilize and remove the line as the sea lions move on before they can get here. However, if we see it again we will report the injury.
Today we found a large fishing hook which must have come loose off of a sea lion. We’ve previously observed sea lions trying to remove fishing hooks from their skin by rubbing against the jetty.
There are quite a few sea lions all over the island now. We have been delaying our water sample that we normally take from the jetty to avoid having to chase them off, since when they are startled they climb over each other or rush off of the side of the jetty where the water isn’t very deep. The few that have come near the house don’t seem to be moving around much, just resting and getting away from the crowds.
With the return of the sea lions we’ve been getting bitten by little black fleas that we also saw in late spring. They were not a problem while the sea lions were not here, so we’re wondering if the two are connected.
Many of the young seagulls have left or are flying very well. A few of the latest hatched are still here, but the mothers are starting to leave them to fend for themselves.
We have been spotting the odd young elephant seal hauling out for a few hours before continuing on.
We’ve been noticing eagle feathers and dead adult seagulls around the island. Oddly, we haven’t seen the eagles hunting.
Maintenance:
We’ve been needing to do daily fence repairs on the electric fence at the back of the island as the sea lions have been trampling it and breaking the wire and insulators that hold the wire on the posts. Hopefully with some persistence on our part they will learn to leave it alone.
Today we also set up the electric fence that runs between our house and the jetty/north island to prevent them from coming up around the infrastructure. They are stinky and destructive if you let them get too close!
We are still picking up sharp bits of tin and shingles/tar paper/ misc. litter from around the island. Some of it is from the roofs being redone recently, but a lot of it is older and becoming exposed now that the grasses are dormant for the summer. Today we filled two buckets in an hour or two of scavenging.
