overcast, misty, light wind. Temperature is up a bit from previous days.
Erik brought chimney sweepers out after noon to clean the chimneys in both houses.
-chimney sweeper suggested we get assist house furnace serviced as it is creating more soot than it should.
Clear sky, moderate wind.
Midday a small pod of orcas passed by to the South of Race Rocks heading W. Later in the afternoon a humpback passed by heading NE.
Friday morning the wind was blowing 25 NMPH NE and picked up throughout the day gusting to 40 NMPH in the evening with waves >5ft breaking on the jetty. The wind brought cold weather from the interior with temperatures below 0 deg C. A cold weather notice was issued by the Metchosin Fire Chief warning of windchill over night reaching below -15 deg C. This morning temperature was -2.6 deg C, sunny, and winds had dropped by noon. Sea water temp has fallen to 7.4 deg C today.
I ran heating coils on the lines out of the freshwater tank and into the main house. Kept a heater on low in the desalinator building overnight and shut off water to assist house and drained pipes. No freeze up problems detected so far.
There was 1 dive boat and 1 ecotour boat in the reserve this afternoon.
Census yesterday (dec 6) at 11:00 from the tower:
47 California sea lions (2 sealions with plastic hoops lodged around their necks)
174 Stellar sea lions
2 harbour seals
5 elephant seals (on W rock, 1 male)
1 river otter
280 gulls
383 cormorants
2 Canada geese
1 raven
3 Eagles
1 Sparrow
I got a ride out to Race Rocks today with Erik to start my winter shift. Pedder Bay was covered in ice up to around the college’s main docks. Courtney updated me on operating procedures and returned with Erik. There was supposed to be a chimney cleaner coming too but it has been snowing since this morning and it was too slippery.
Chunk was in the water by the jetty when we arrived and came up the ramp. He is so big that i thought it was the alpha male, Misery, at first. The scars, from getting chewed up by Misery, are visible on his back.
The snow stopped before sunset so I cleaned off the solar panels. The tilted panels were partly clear whereas the horizontal panels had accumulated about an inch of snow.
With the calm warm weather this week and approach of spring there has been a marked increase in vessel traffic in the reserve this week. We have been averaging 5-10 vessels a day, mainly eco tour boats like this large one in the photo.
Recently there was an incident where a boater traveled through the reserve well in excess of the 7 knot speed limit. Fortunately we have a good relationship with Pedder Bay Marina and I was able to contact them and someone spoke with the operator. In my experience, the staff and management at the marina are always very cooperative and are willing to work with us to ensure that boaters are aware of the rules and that repeat offenders get reported or restricted from using their facilities. Thanks Pedder Bay Marina!
Misery has been off the main island and out of sight since about March 16. A few female elephant seals have been around, there have been 4 or 5 on Middle rock for the past few days.
On the 26th I saw a Sea Otter off the south side of the island. It was mostly swimming on its back and at one point had a sea urchin it was eating on its belly. A few seals followed it as it swam towards middle rock.
See this file on one previous occurrence of Sea Otters at Race Rocks 
Tomorrow is the last day of my 4 month shift at Race Rocks. Mike will be returning to take over.
I returned to the island on March 26 after spending about a week off island. While I was away a 55+ knot wind hit the island. The Guest house has been losing shingles all winter, this time it took a whole section of the roofing and tar paper off and blew it all over the island. The guardian said he heard pieces hitting the main house. A roofing crew has been out here each day since Tuesday and have nearly finished installing a new metal roof. There has also been two guys working on installing new vinyl floors in the guest house.
Today a relief guardian came out to take my place for about a week. A pair of Turkey Vultures landed on the island and an air craft carrier passed by in the distance behind Rosedale Reef. Oddly, on close examination this carrier appears to be carrying cars not aircraft on its upper deck.
http://www.racerocks.com/racerock/eco/taxalab/2006/cathartesa/cathartesa.htm
See this file on Turkey Vultures at Race Rocks
There is a constant flow of shipping traffic passing by Race Rocks to and from Seattle and Vancouver each day. Once in a while there are ships that are very loud with a low, rumbling sound that I can hear and feel in the house as they pass by. This oil tanker, the Alaskan Frontier, on its way West towards the infamous Port of Valdez, Alaska, was one of the loud ones. The information below was obtained from http://ais3.siitech.com/VTSLite/AView.aspx which tracks all major marine traffic in the area.
This ship may have been louder than others because as is shown in the photo it is sitting quite high out of the water, likely empty on its way to fill up on crude in Alaska. Which means that when carrying a load it would be projecting this sound underwater, maybe louder, where sound travels further. Which begs the question: how much noise pollution are we subjecting marine mammals to in this area? What impact does it have on their ability to communicate, hunt, and navigate? It would be great to be able to listen to the sound underwater and measure these sound levels at Race Rocks.
As well as the sound, there is the unregulated emissions from these ships. On a clear busy day there is a haze that hangs over the ocean to the East. Sometimes I can smell and taste diesel fumes out here when ships are miles away. On top of this of course is the constant risk of an accident; it doesn’t have to be a tanker to spill fuel.
With the potential of an increase in tanker traffic and tanker size in this area, to handle increased production from the Tar Sands, the focus of environmental groups seems to be on the risk of increasing traffic. I think the question we should be asking is what is the impact and risk of the existing traffic? Are there any impact studies being done? More broadly: Do we value the ocean more as an access route for cheap goods or as a habitat for marine life? What is the true cost of cheap shipping? What is acceptable risk?
On a related note, I have not seen many whales this winter.
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After a few weeks of waiting for the shipment to arrive, we were finally able to bring the new flooring for the Science Centre out to Race Rocks. In the process of loading the packages from the truck to the boat at the Pearson College maintenance dock one of the wheel barrels got out of hand and dumped some of the floor into the ocean. With the aid of an old dry suit, my friend Marc was able to retrieve them. We gave them a fresh water rinse and lay them out to dry. Once at Race Rocks we used the crane to offload the flooring to the crane deck and then wheel-barrelled them to the science centre. It took two boat trips and most of the day to get all the flooring out, luckily the weather was calm and sunny.
