Garry Fletcher (ER Warden) and the IT team from Pearson College came ashore this morning. The IT team worked on replacing some of the wiring at the top of the lighthouse while I gave Garry a brief rundown of the happenings on the island.
A group of 9 visitors from the Kule Foundation came for a tour later in the afternoon. They spent close to an hour exploring every part of the island, including the top of the lighthouse, as Guy and I provided information, facts and stories.
After a Seaking Adventures boat violated the rules of the reserve day before yesterday and went into the eastern channel, I called the company this evening to give a warning. They explained that they have a new driver who is new to the area, but assured me that there would be no more boating violations on their part.
HMCS Edmonton was headed towards Pedder Bay this evening, along with a tail of two hard-hulled inflatables.
Bird Notes
A Pelican spent a good part of the afternoon on the island, just north of the student house. I haven’t seen this Pelican here before in the last 10 days that I have been at Race Rocks.
More seagull eggs. None hatched yet. Seagulls are relatively less aggressive than usual for this time of the year.
Marine Mammals
Garry spotted a new male Elephant Seal on the island today. It’s a fairly young one with remarkably unmarked/scarred skin. We believe that’s because it may have recently finished molting.
One of the whale watching boats entered the channel on the East side of the main island. I was busy trying to get them to reverse out and couldn’t run to get a picture unfortunately. I’ll be on the lookout for the same boat again.
Guy brought several volunteers and visitors to the island today! The volunteers helped Guy place some of the old batteries on the upper shelves of the battery room. Guy was also able to help me with the desalination and power washer issues. We were also able to test the YSI meter to confirm that it is giving inaccurate readings and needs to be fixed.
Marine Mammals
There were 3 female and 1 male Elephant Seals on the island today. The second male from yesterday was nowhere in sight.
The calm weather attracted several ecotour boats as well as many private boats
I witnessed several boating violations:
2 marina boats were getting really close to the sea lions. I had to call the marina and report the boats.
A private small boat tried to enter the ramp area near the jetty. I went up to the jetty and asked them to reverse out of that area.
A whale watching boat almost entered the lighthouse island and the south islands, but stopped short when I went outside and made myself visible.
Technical
Over the last 48 hours, for some reason, the batteries were draining faster than usual and even running the generator for 2+ hours daily wasn’t enough. This morning the batteries came to a critical low of 18%. I got in touch with Guy over IM and we troubleshooted the cause to be excess power consumption from the student house. After closing a few switches and unplugging some machines, I ran the generator for 4 hours and was able to bring the batteries back up to 100%. The bright sun all day today definitely also helped juice the batteries up faster.
Ecological
Noticed several more seagull eggs today. None hatched so far
About a dozen elephant seals out there today, one young male, the rest female
looks like there is a few oyster catcher nests around, I saw the one by the house awhile ago, I hope to see them hatch before I leave at the end of the month but we will see
Guy and Travis took a couple groups of students for a cruise around the island, unfortunately it was too shallow for them to dock so they went around in the boats
Ecological
Only counted 11 elephant seals today, one might be hiding in the rocks on the east side though
the seagulls are building their nests but no eggs yet
