Category Archives: Island Visitors

eagle

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Moderate NE winds all day. 3 ft wind chop. Cloudy but no rain.
The students left yesterday, and some volunteers from the college made a brief photo stop when Chris came to pick them up.

There was a boat fishing illegally in the reserve this morning. It left before I could try to make radio contact.

low west swell

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Overcast in the morning, sunny in the evening. The gale and small craft advisory never arrived, light winds all day.
2 ft West swell running this morning. The water still has great visibility.
Tour boats: 7
Dive boats: 1

A float plane flew over this morning.
Grey whale spouts in the mouth of Pedder Bay this morning. Spouts to the South-West at sunset.
Maciek was dropped of by Chris early this evening. He’ll be here for project week.

Another organization now using remote (and remotely operated) cameras is Pacific Wild. After you’ve looked at what’s going on here at Race Rocks, maybe spend a few minutes up the coast in the Great Bear Rainforest and see what the wolves and bears are up to [click here to go see].

 

-Ran desalinator
-Sorted recycling
-Completed WHMIS ticket

visitors

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Glassy calm seas, perfect water visibility, and no wind.

Some friends came to visit: Breanna, Rob, and Blair. After my morning chores of boat count and water sample, we spent the whole day just watching the animals and enjoying the weather. Having people come visit who haven’t spent much time by the water, or who live in the city, or who are just stoked is really refreshing. It’s nice to be reminded of how amazing it is out in this ecological reserve.

Tour boats: 9

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)

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

First Visitor

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Sunny all day, light to no wind. 7.5′ tide, the swell has dropped right off. Strange tide cycle and currents for the next couple days. Almost no current for the afternoon high tide.

Water visibility is crystal clear. If you’re thinking of going for a dive, now is the time.

1450 DND blast
1510 DND blast

Off station from 0910 to 1200 to bring Jamieson out to visit.
Got gas from Pedder Bay.

-ran desalinator
-washed solar panels
-sent branded sea lion photos to NOAA contact

first student trip of the school year

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A group of 11 students and a teacher visited Race Rocks today for the IB Biology class. They had hoped to do some food web observations in tide pools, but with the tides today and the swell that’s been running it wasn’t possible. Instead, they spent some time observing sea lion behavior and getting their first impressions of the ecological reserve.

With the high tide and swell the sea lions have set up camp in front of the science house on the South-West side of the island.

1110 Coast Guard helicopter flew over East to West

Tour boats: 8

There’s a great swell running, smashing into West and North Rocks throwing huge spray into the air

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PC Students observing sea lion behavior

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PC Students taking in it all in

-Fixed electric fences that were damaged over night by sea lions
-Cleaned solar panels
-Swept walkways
-Erik helped get the boat shed doors up. Waiting on hardware to finish.