Category Archives: Mammal Notes

propaganda and fog

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~10 kts West wind all day. The fog continues.

Tour boats: 3
With this fog, it is impossible to know how many tour boats have actually come through the reserve this past week. Visibility is usually about 50m and not more than 250m (I checked using Google earth). All day I can hear the low boom of the ships fog horns as they move up and down the strait.

There are still lots of sea lions in the reserve. They are mostly on the North-East flats and South of the student house.
The elephant seal with the scabby molt is camped out on the grass next to the desalinator bunker, the rest are in the shallows next to the boat ramp.

[ Nature doesn’t need to be maintained; it only needs a little breathing room ]
This week, the 3rd International Marine Protected Areas Congress is happening in France. Their goal is to support the realization of having 20% of the worlds oceans under some form of protection by 2020. IMPAC provides a framework to evaluate the progress made towards this goal and to work on new solutions. Check out this Nat Geo blog for a brief summary of why marine protected areas are important: 3 lessons from MPAs around the world

The background noise generated by shipping vessels can have detrimental impacts on marine mammals. This brief media release (with a video) introduces some of the issues regarding noise from shipping traffic and its effect on marine mammals: ship noise impacts on whales. Original Article: Williams, R., et al. (2013) Acoustic quality of critical habitats for three threatened whale populations. Animal Conservation

 

-desalinator maintenance (changed cartridge filters, backflushed media filter)
-made a new lid for the water tank

fog

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Cloudy, with periods of fog. Evening fog. No rain.

Our reference on Fog as an abiotic factor can be found at: http://www.racerocks.com/racerock/abiotic/fog/fog.htm

3 elephant seals decided to come up off the boat ramp today. It started with Cranky-Pants (the seal with the scabby molt) and she was followed by two of the larger females. They spent the afternoon lying in the grass next to the desalinator bunker.

Still seeing the White fronted goose and the Cackling goose. The larger Canada geese bully the two smaller geese, but they still tend to move around the island in a group.

Off station from 1230 to 1430 to get food

cloudy

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Cloudy, but still no rain. Light NE winds most of the day. No fog.
First day it actually felt like Fall. It didn’t get above 10C today.
Water temp 9.8C. Visibility is still pretty good, but nothing like it was last week.
Tour boats: 14
Dive boat: 1

Fly over by an air plane midday. NE to SW. Low.

The Elephant seals are still camped out on the boat ramp. The small females are always next to the juvenile male. But the larger females are less interested in him. Still no sign of Misery.

The seagull with the broken wing has taken to following me around the island.

The outer rocks/islands have almost no sea lions on them. They have all moved to the North-East flats next to the Keeper’s house and on the South side of the student house.

-Ran desalinator
-Pressure washed South side and reachable West side of keepers house

birds

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Morning fog. Moderate East wind. Sunny the rest of the day.
Tour boats: 4

It seems that, as the sea lions are leaving, more gulls and birds are moving onto Greater Race Rock. There have also been a lot of dense groups of gulls and diving birds on the water in and around the reserve.

The juvenile elephant seal with scabby molt (aka ‘Cranky Pants’) has returned to the boat ramp. Her skin has healed up a bit since she was last here a few weeks ago.

Kayakers next to South Rock

Kayakers next to South Rock-This kind of approach regularly scares birds and the seals and sea lions form the rocks.

-took the boston whaler in, traded it for a zodiac
-loaded the boat dolly onto Second Nature with Erik
-ran desalinator
-cleaned and scraped the zodiac
-tidied basement

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

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 storm of the season

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The storm arrived today. Calm in the morning. Blew 30 kts SE for the afternoon. Backed to 30 kts WSW this evening.
Waves big enough to break over the whole jetty.

Most of the sea lions are gone.
The elepant seals came ashore and are piled up behind the boat shed. A new molty juvenile arrived today.
7 tour boats this morning when it was calm

Saw a raven this morning.
Also saw a Stellar sea lion with a line around it’s neck, but it disapeared before I could get a photo.

-ran desalinator
-DFO boat count
-water sample (thankfully while it was still calm)

 

rain

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Environment Canada had a gale forcasted for today, but it only got up to 25 kts. Tomorrow is supposed to get a bit more serious. The rain really started around 1600 hrs. Almost 20 mm of rain today.

Very few boats out today, which is reasonable, considering the weather and the forecast.
The coast guard cruised through the channel this morning.

Took the flag down in expectation of some foul weather tonight.

-ran the desalinator
-used the rain to scrub the solar panels
-swept/mopped some pathways

End of calm weather

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Overcast all day, light ESE wind in the morning, dead calm in the late afternoon. Big storm forecasted for this weekend.

Single DND blasts: 0920, 0925, 1045, 1300
Tour boats: 7

Off station from 1430 to 1530 to drop Jamieson back at the College

Elephant seals were gnawing on the boat trailer while trying to get the boat on. They definitely are not concerned about humans while they are in the water.

-Got pressure washer running with help from Jamieson
-Put barrels below downspouts to collect water for pressure washing
-Ran desalinator