Ecological Notes:

Race Rocks is a wealth of biodiversity, and an amazing place to get to spend any amount of time. Despite the huge amount of wildlife that spend time on Race Rocks over the winter, it can feel a little quiet. Not last week!

We were super lucky getting some of the Pearson College students out despite COVID lockdowns on Campus, this is always one of the highlights of our time at Race Rocks! The kids always have the best questions and remind me why I pursued the life I live now. Any opportunity to share the joy and smells of Race Rocks.

Pearson Students getting Elephant Seal 101. Photo by Laura Verhegge

After the final group of students left, we got a surprise visit from DFO via their helicopter coming by for a socially-distanced visit. We had a helicopter buzzing us throughout the week, and it wasn’t until it landed at the end of the week we realized that was most likely the crew checking out the island, seals, and heli-pad. The elephant seals clearly weren’t fans of the helicopter. Interesting-ly the idling helicopter covers the same sound frequencies the Beachmaster uses to drum his dominance. Our Beachmaster tried drumming at the intruder, but he couldn’t overpower the sound and decided that abandoning his harem and a trip into the ocean was preferable to hanging out with a helicopter.

The next day we woke up to a new female Elephant Seal! We suspect this seal was Tyra from last year, going off her scar patterns and BEAUTIFUL eyes. At this point in the season we have expectations for these seals: they come ashore, hang out for 5 days, give birth, nurse for 21 days, mate and leave. Tyra was a reminder that we don’t really know that much about these mysterious animals. She came ashore, mated, and left. She looked great, very plump. I am really quite surprised. Maybe not all pregnancies come to term, and in that light her behaviour actually makes a lot of sense. She needs to come ashore when a Beachmaster is ready to mate, and if she doesn’t have a pup to birth then there really isn’t a reason to stick around and wait until it’s time to moult.

Tyra returning to Race Rocks to visit the Beachmaster. All hail the Beachmaster!

And we had a new pup born! I told you lots happened. Rhi-Rhi has been ashore since January 25th and slipped out a new pup this morning. The new pup is super chirpy, and very mobile; it had a very ‘rolled up’ vibe directly after being born, with curled fingernails and it’s giant flippers wrapped around itself. We expect her to nurse until the 22nd of February, but clearly I need to stop trying to predict what these animals are going to do.

Rhi-Rhi inspecting her newborn pup.

Facility Work:

Race Rocks has a Boston Whaler from it’s Coast Guard era that can be used in case of an emergency. During a very low tide we figured this was the ideal time to re-spool the twisted up cable used to launch the boat. While it’s easy to think that emergencies never happen, it’s great to know that in that hypothetical situation the boat will be able to be launched on any tide without any problems. Big thanks to the previous Eco-Guardians who did some great boat maintenance!

DND events:

Lots of blasting over the last week, some of the Pearson College students were definitely surprised.

Elephant Seals seem happiest when all smushed up against each other.

Feature Event:

We had someone report a wayward Elephant Seals wandering around Sturdees Beach & the Gorge vale Golf Club. This fits very well with the theme of ‘we don’t really know much about Elephant Seals’ and thought it would be worth mentioning. As the Northern Elephant Seal population continues to recover, hopefully we’ll all get to experience more Elephant Seals in British Colombia, and sometimes that might be a returning pup who hasn’t really figured out the timing of things yet. They’re really remarkable animals, who spend a very small proportion of their time (<10%) above the water Over the last 2 years there have been wayward pups reported crawling around in areas where they were not wanted, these little seals are just looking for some place safe to moult and head back into the ocean. This is one of the parts that makes Race Rocks such an important place for these animals: a place on land where the seals can hang out and sleep without being disturbed: their time on land relies on them fasting for weeks on end losing up to 40% of their body weight during these stints. Every time they get woken up or stressed that is another drain on their limited energy available, leading to the first couple of years where mortality can be up to 75%.

A wayward elephant seal pup at Christie Point, photos by Dorothy Chambers

The silver colouration shows this wayward pup has already moulted, so probably from last years birthing season. While we would expect pups to return to Race Rocks to moult, we don’t really know how they return to the same areas, and they may just try out new areas at different times; or just get lost.

https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/seal-hits-the-links-at-gorge-vale-likely-same-one-that-has-toured-view-royal-5009767

Weather Events:

It was a lovely week of weather, punctuated with a nice little blast of wind of 40 knots+ Sunday and Monday.

The first pup Mikey is already starting to moult his soft baby fuzz into a silvery sleek diving suit of fur at 41 days old.

Weather – Current:

http://www.victoriaweather.ca/current.php?id=72

Weather – Past:

http://www.victoriaweather.ca/station.php