Census day! See below:
Mammals:
Birds:
It has been a fantastic few days out here! The team from the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue Society came out with DFO to disentangle the California sea lion that I first spotted last October.
He was sleeping up high on the boat launch with made landing at the jetty tricky because we didn’t want to scare the sea lions and risk him going in the water. Instead, DFO dropped the rescue team off the south side of the island. The current was strong so we weren’t sure it would be possible, but they were able to safely nose the rhib into the rocks behind the generator building and the team came up the rocks. This ended up being great because we could approach the entangled sea lion without scaring him, and there are significantly less sea lions on the south side lately, so the disturbance was minimal.
For those who don’t already know, when I’m not at the lighthouse, I work full time as a Registered Veterinary Technologist with the Marine Mammal Rescue Society. This was my team coming out, and disentanglements are one of my favourite parts of the job. Doing this work at Race Rocks is especially meaningful: I can help save an animal, and I’m often the person who finds and monitors them, coordinates with the team, and supports the rescue. Afterward, I’m able to continue monitoring the animal in the following days, which is incredibly rewarding.
The rescue itself was straight forward, Dr. Haulena darted the entangled sea lion with a sedation protocol that allows us to approach and work with the animal, but doesn’t sedate them so deeply that if they end up going into the water they won’t drown. Thankfully, after the initial shock of the dart, the sea lion only moved a few feet before settling back down on the ramp. The sedation takes about 12 minutes to take effect, at which time we moved in. We quickly discovered that the entanglement material was a thick industrial rubber band, these bands have a wide variety of uses in the marine field and can often be found on commercial crab traps or used in other pot fisheries. Once the band was removed, we place a flipper tag on each of his fore flippers, these are not satellite tags, but they can help us identify the animals in future sightings.
A great example of this is the animal Eva helped us with in August. He is still here and I was able to determine that by taking a photo of his tags and then comparing them to our spreadsheet. Each tag has a unique number on it that allows to ID the animal when resighted. I’ll insert a photo of the animal we rescued in August below:
Once we were done, we gave him an injection to reverse the sedation and then we watched from the top of the of the boat launch as he woke up, stretched out, and then entered the water and swam off. He later hauled back out on the rocks to the left of the jetty and is currently still there as I write this. I can’t imagine the relief he must be feeling and I’m already excited to see him here again next year!
You can watch the rescue video here: https://youtu.be/EJJ7pKWvKIY?si=JR4Ft_c99E8h6POc
The team was gone by 12:30, and with them they took my dad whose been here this first week with me. It’s been so special having him here and spending time with him, he is the one who taught me my love for the ocean and he enjoys it out here just as much as I do!
Aside from the excitement of the disentanglement, things have been quite calm around here. The weather has been incredible, glassy seas and no wind, full sun and whales everywhere! Today is supposed to reach 40 knot winds (close to 80km/hr) and raining, so today I’ve be battening the hatches and making sure everything is securely put away and I have everything I need in the house. The generator is being run manually at the moment so I will need to make a couple outside treks to turn that on and off but other than that my plans include a fire and storm watching from inside. I’m very curious to see how that affects Saturday’s census!
And lastly, we have a young female elephant seal back at Race Rocks! She has been hanging out with the Stellers on the South rocks but hopefully she comes up to the grass soon!
Facility work for the past couple days:
Vessels:
Visitors:
It’s been so beautiful lately it feels like summer!! Spent most of today outside enjoying the weather, tons of whales as usual. The entangled CSL is still here, and so is the young Steller pup. I have yet to see him with a mother which does concern me at his age, so I am keeping a close eye on him.
The Red-Footed Booby is still around which is always exciting each day I get to see it!
Lots of boats on the water today:
Another stunning day on the rocks! Calm seas, and beautiful sun all day long. Nothing beats waking up to watch the sunrise and thinking it can’t get better and then you watch the sunset as whales lunge feed in the distance.
Today was census day, a few new birds (for me) and surprisingly low sea lion numbers compared to Christines last count and compared to my counts at this time in 2025 and 2024. We had a good rain a few days ago and that usually clears out a lot of them so I imagine they’re slowly coming back now and by next Saturday the numbers will be higher.
Mammals:
Birds:
Shout out to my cousin (and wildlife biologist) Nick for helping me ID the osprey and greater yellow leg!
Facility work:
The red-footed booby was here bright and early his morning, seems to be going back and forth between the western rocks and the southeast side. It also seems to have quite the fan club of boats coming out to check it out.
Came across another sea lion with an entanglement scar, bringing the total to 5, plus the one that still has an active entanglement.
Active entanglement, unsure what the material is.
Another wildlife note – there is a small Steller sea lion pup that I have yet to see with a mom in the 3 days I’ve been here. He is underweight but not terribly so and is still bright and alert. He spends his time chasing the male California sea lions and today decided to try and eat a small rock. Will see if he sticks around, and hopefully mom comes back for him!
Facility work:
Vessels:
Beautiful day today, cloudy but flat calm seas. Only a few minor repairs for the fence today, the new system is pretty sleek!
As per usual most of my notes are wildlife related. I found 4 sea lions with entanglement scars today, two are untagged so were likely able to free themselves. Two were tagged, one was the CSL the team at VAMMR disentangled in August about a month ago, and the other one took me a bit longer to track down the story.
Entanglement scar, no tag.
Entanglement scar and tagged, this one was rescued in August thanks to Eva’s great tracking and reporting.
As it turns out, he was disentangled by a NOAA team in 2021 on San Miguel Island when he was only a couple of years old. It’s wild that he’s come so far, but he looks great!
Later in the day I got a call over the radio from one of the eco-tourism boats in the area to let me now a few transients were coming by. They passed quickly but were awesome to see, and for the first time in my LIFE I actually stopped photographing killer whales to photograph…a bird!!!
But not just any bird, it was a red-footed booby! It was first sighted around Race Rocks a few weeks ago and was apparently hanging around but I really didn’t think I’d get to see it. My photos aren’t great so hopefully he’ll stick around for some better ones!
Facility work:
Vessels: