Author Archives: Courtney Edwards

plumbing day

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Overcast with intermittent showers. Calm seas with a low westerly swell building in the evening.

tour boats: 5

Elephant seal 6360 has returned after being gone for a couple weeks.

P1000926

#6360

P1000925

#6360

 

-Installed shut off from student house to solar panels
-Fixed leak in hose valve at SW corner of energy building
-Fixed leaky hose nozzle and valve on solar panel roof
-Fixed and reaplced all broken and missing hose attachments that could be found
-Worked on the RR operating manual

supply day

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Low easterly swell running. Light winds, clear skies.

6 tour boats this afternoon
12 elephant seals this morning, all lying on the ramp from the boat shed to the tank house.

Off station from 1130 to 1300 hours.
Dropped Jamieson off and picked up supplies

mammal census

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Calm and sunny.

As of 1130, sighted from the tower, there are:
233 Stellar sea lions
269 California sea lions
100 Harbour seals
11 Elephant seals

The white fronted goose is still around.
Saw whale spouts and tail flukes to the West. Likely Gray whales.

-Washed desalinator bunker and water tank shed
-Pressure washed West wall of student house

Animal Notes

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A single, juvenile Greater White Fronted goose (Anser albifrons) arrived a few days ago and has been rustling around the middle of Greater Race Rock. This species was also documented at Race Rocks on May 2012, May 2007 and September 2007. Thanks Ann for verifying the species.

At the end of September a juvenile elephant seal was on the jetty for roughly a week. It had the classic signs of a scabby molt. Scabby molt is a skin disease that attacks elephant seals between the ages of eight months and two years old. Two-year-old elephant seals often suffer from a skin disease known as the northern elephant seal skin disease or NESSD for short. This form of dermatitis is also often referred to as scabby molt. This ulcerative skin disease can either infect a small portion of the fur and underlying skin or spread to cover up to 60% or more of this outer protective layer. Although, in most cases, the elephant seals heal up without any further problems, sometimes, secondary bacterial infections and/or sepsis can lead to death.

Check out this link to a paper by Beckamn et al, 1997 that describes this disease.

-Ran desalinator
-Washed solar panels
-Washed exterior windows on Student house
-Tidied Student house basement and bathroom
-Hung pictures in student house
-Fixed underwater camera issue with help from Jonathan

whale of a day

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Light East and North-East winds. Sunny, calm and awesome all weekend.

Saw some grey or humpback whales (not sure which) breaching to the south of the reserve around midday

Joe MacInnis came out for a brief visit today with Chris Blondeau. Joe is a strong supporter of the Race Rocks ecological reserve as well as a Canadian diving, exploration, and marine research hero.

Still lot’s of tour boats out, it helps that the weather was absolutely perfect this weekend.
Tour boats: 6

A boat fishing illegally within the reserve from ~1600 to 1700 hrs. They did not respond to radio calls and were reported to the Fisheries Violation Reporting Line.

Water visibility is still crystal clear. This was probably the best weekend of the year to dive out here and there wasn’t a single human in the water.

Watched sea lions eating salmon in the evening.

(Note: Jamieson chose today’s post title)

illegal fishing

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tour boats: 4

A rental boat was fishing illegally within the reserve boundaries on the North side of the kelp bed in Middle Channel from 1330 to 1400 hours. They did not respond to radio calls. They were reported to the illegal fishing hotline.

Still having issues with the Davis weather station. It has needed to be reset several times in the past days.

-New screen door handle on keeper’s house
-Door sweep on student house
-Tidied up more outside (woodpile, pathways, etc)
-Got the pressure washer and new pump working

PC divers

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A bit cooler than previous days, but otherwise a lovely overcast day with sunny periods.
A bit of SE wind in the morning, glassy calm in the evening.

Tour boats: 9, mostly in the afternoon
A Winter Wren has been hanging out by the desalinator shed

Jamieson and Maciek on the island today
Erik + 6 divers, 3 surface tenders, and Laura Verhegge came out for a dive off the jetty
Maciek left for the college with the dive boat

Incident with a tour boat operating over top of the divers, despite a properly posted dive flag and hand signals to back off. Settled it over the radio.
Consider making it policy to call a securite on the radio to inform operators that there are divers in the water.

-A box of supplies was delivered by Erik for a variety repairs
-Scoped out plumbing repairs in the student house
-Started cleaning student house (murdered flies, cleaned windows and sills, vacuumed)
-Ran dealinator
-Practiced docking the boat on the jetty in the evening with the ‘Jamieson School of Boat Handling’

lots of visitors

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Pretty calm all day. Intermittent showers, moments of sun. 2 ft swell still running

Erik brought Maciek (our new volunteer) out this morning, he’ll stay until Friday to help out with two person projects.
Tharis came out for a visit for a few hours just to see the awesomeness of Race Rocks.
Students from the college and Catrin Brown came out for a lab on food webs, and Libby Mason’s brother (whose name escapes me right now) also came out with the students.

First day that I didn’t see any marine tour boats
Lots of commercial fishing boats heading back out to sea now that the bad weather has passed
Coast Guard was heading out this evening
Spotted a California sea lion with a line around its neck
Noticed a Glaucous winged gull with a broken wing

-Ran desalinator
-Cleaned tops of batteries and replaced cups; tidied battery room
-Chopped up log along jetty
-Reset Davis instruments computer. It was having issues since I installed the UPS yesterday.
-Posted missing seawater data to the log from February and August
-Posted branded sea lion photos to the log