Category Archives: Facility work

Gale Warning

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Weather

At 5:00AM Wind:17 knots from West ,Visibility:8 to 10 miles,Sea:choppy. At 6:30 no wind and foggy :Horn on.Wind getting Southwest and raising later.Gale warning in effect for the night.Air temperature at 5:00:12.5 degrees celsius.and 9.5 at dew point.From 6:30 to 1:00 the horn has been honking despite the 18 knots wind.All the sudan it was pretty foggy on one West/North side but totally clear on the South side of the rocks and just the time to spot a humpback whale fishing around the green boyd:beautiful scenery.a little too far for good pictures.In the beginning of the afternoon we could observe some large patches of fog but later the wind picked up to 30 knots and no fog anymore for the day.

Ecological

When we had finished with the solar panel cleaning I went around looking for the nest Riley was speaking about,the one we couldn’t find with James the other day .Finally I found it with 2 eggs in it an by the way I discovered a  hatching goose and the male close by.She was amazingly hidden and protected by 2 rocks and hard to see…so that means that we have 5 geese instead of 3 and maybe more pretty soon. Guy saw on South Rocks 5 huge Steeler sea lions and one had the word ROB on its left side.No time to get pictures ,they jumped hastily.

Did you have a look on the oystercatcher nest? beautiful especially by night !

I realized that I have seen no pelagic cormorants this year.  12 elephant seals in the morning on main ;none on the other Rocks.We will do the census as soon as the weather will be good enough.

Boats

7 to 10 eco-tour boats and the first one not before 11AM. Around 18:00 a big US coast guard vessel at the border line.

Maintenance 

We restart the new camera connection.

Guy finished to repaired the starboard corner of the whaler :water infiltrations in the hule in that spot.

I brought to date the freezer. Windows need attention as soon as possible !

 

 

 

 

48 knots gust of wind!

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Weather

At 5:30AM 25 knots west wind;Sea :wavelets and white cups,Visibility :+10 miles,Gale warning for Noon.Fog on the american coast 1st time in a week. No real change to 2:00 in the afternoon. At 1:40 fog is coming towards us…rushing for my earplugs (the best wax kind ). At 2:00 the wind pick up at 29 knots and the fog got pretty thick and was at 150 meters from Great .First 3 notes of the season at 2:48 !!!

The wind forced up regularly from #5 knots at 3:45 to 39 at 4:30 to reach a pick of 47.8 at 7:50. We were (I mean  the house) shaking!!! At 9:00 the wind was down around 30 knots

At 7:27 A Mae West at the radio VHF on the 16 ,Problems around Jericho Beach.

Boats

A big eco – tour boat at 8:30 PM with a 40 knots wind.

We saw a big fishing boat heading up towards Sooke against the wind in the afternoon.

Maintenance

House cleaning  jobs

Yellow tank ( generator) filled up to full.

Starboard corner being rebuilt in fiberglass (Water infiltrations )

Solar panels.

Other

Finally I managed not perfectly but…to put some “not so good pictures “on the log. I will get used to this beautiful but very heavy camera.

Water sampling: Because of the wind we did it a little bit later but the tide was still rising to midnight. the water was colder than the days before and the salinity a little bit higher.

 

 

IT Visitors

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Weather
Sea:calm
Wind :8 knots
Sky:Cloudy to clear
Later very hot day with a mirror sea

Ecological
Seawater is getting warmer
Long bathing time for the 2 big males and 2  young elephant seals at the jetty.
The tide was very low and I found 2 huge mussels as big as my hand ! Impressed!
One elephant seal never moved for 2 days . She looks old or sick ,maybe both?
Found a gull and a harbour seal dead (not recent).

Maintenance

Max changed the routers in the houses
Max and James installed a camera on a oystercatcher nest with 2 eggs in it. The nest is closest to the boat shed at the top of the rocks, actually just under the camera 5. The new 24/24 camera will be on youtube pretty soon .
Aziz ,a 2nd year student, working at the college this Summer, took pictures and came with me to the top of the lighthouse.
Kyle and Guy pulled the diesel hoses through the island and empty them (around 10 litres) and put them back in their shed
Seawater house: heavy cleaning ,floor and bank inside and outside (old shingles from the roof)
Solar panels and alleys swept.

Vessels

Busy day . More than 30 eco tours vessels and around 4:30 ,8 at the same time …

Other 

Summer is here Quiet and beautiful evening on the rock especially
White everywhere ..More gulls. Can’t wait for the census next week!

 

1st full day on the rocks

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Weather

Wind : NW wind ,26 knots at 5:30 ,up to 30  at 7:30 and back to 3 :00 in the afternoon

Sky: Rainy first and cloudy later.

Visibility: 5 miles at 5:30 getting better later

Sea: Wavelets,white caps to calm later in the day.

Ecological

All the elephant seals went fishing this night,came back one after the other this morning.

13 geese pay a visit in the evening and left one hour later.

In the evening an eagle flew over 2 times and post itself on the crane ! the gulls got mad.

Sea water :Temperature 11.1 and salinity:32.1

We found a dry tailbone

Boats

Huge traffic the whole day . All kinds of boats: around 10 Whale Watchers,a few fishing boats,a Canadian sailboat,2 cruising boats,a logging boat with its tugboats,tankers and containers ,an American ship,The Port – Angeles ferryboat,Later I made a quick research on one big square gray one : it was a vehicules carrier coming from Bahamas going to San Diego,Draught:9.1 meter,Speed:20 knots,Gross tonnage :58.767 tonnes . Her name Genius Highway (From Marine Traffic Website).

DND Activity

A few blasts at 9:40,9:44,10:42 ,10:44,and 5:30 in the evening.

Maintenance

Student house tank filled up

Student main house tank filled up

Run the generator for 2 hours and half

Main house :Inside tidying up.

DSC_6630

 

Wild Weather

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Ecological Happenings

  • Wild weather today. +30kt winds and rough seas.

Marine Vessels

  • 1 tour boat this afternoon
  • 1 fishing boat

Maintenance

  • We have begun to build up our water supply again, after running it down in an attempt to sterilize the system after chlorination.
  • The main house water pump was dismantled ahead of the new pump and buffer tank being connected. It appears, from internet research, that there is an iron-reducing bacteria (IRB) in the system (a brown, rusty slime in the old buffer tank, and pitting corrosion on the inside of the pump housing). This would explain why the filters have been so dirty. Hopefully the new pump and tank, along with chlorination, take care of the problem.

Count Day

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The sky was partially overcast early but cleared a bit in late morning. Then it clouded over and finally started to rain as it socked in just before dark. The wind started out east-northeast then turned to west late morning before backing all the way around to southwest. The barometric pressure is rising as I write this log and the forecast calls for clearing in the morning and sunshine. Winds will turn to westerly 10 – 15 knots Friday afternoon.

Commercial whale watching vessels made fifteen observed visits to the Ecological Reserve today. One vessel regularly comes in fast and not slowing until well inside the go slow boundary and then consistently speeds up early. The same vessel can be seen hop-scotching ahead of endangered southern resident killer whales as the pass by and in the reserve, sitting almost on top of the sea otter. It is a large, noisy vessel that reliably pushes the limits of respectful whale watching and will end up by hitting an animal or worse. Most of the operators realize that this sort of behaviour is not sustainable.

Biggs Killer Whales were already being followed by the whale-watching fleet before they came into the Ecological Reserve from the east and milled in and around South Seal Rocks and the breaking rock just off the energy building. There were many sea lions in the water, some craning their necks to see better and others just trying to maintain as much time as possible in the air, by repeatedly leaping airborne. I am not sure if the killer whales made a kill or not but sense that they did. There was some fancy criss-cross swimming by the first three whales, then a little one accompanied by a bigger one arrived on scene. This was followed by a few minutes with all the whales underwater and gull action above, which made me think food leftovers. After that they left, heading south and then southeast, dogged by the fleet. Two vessels came into the reserve while the whales were already inside. It is possible that they were not aware on entering but they did not leave once they were aware of the whales’ presence.

Ecologically, the transition from summer into fall continues. Salmon migration is still strong and birds, pinnipeds and cetaceans abundant. The size of the multi-species feeding flocks on the water, is increasing daily with some aggregations (outside the protected area) appearing to have thousands of gulls.

Thursday is animal census day so here are the numbers for charismatic mega-fauna.

Steller Sea Lion 303

California Sea Lion 578

Harbour Seal 187

Northern Elephant Seal 11

Sea Otter 1

Southern Resident Killer Whale (2 in ER during count week, additional 18 in Race Passage during count week)

Biggs Killer Whale (Transients) 6 today (3 more during count week)

Humpback Whale (3 during count week)

Canada Goose 0 full time (flock of ~25 chased off almost daily)

Harlequin Duck 0

Double-crested Cormorant 25

Brandt’s Cormorants 22

Pelagic Cormorant 6

Unidentified cormorants 17

Black Oystercatcher 5

Black Turnstone 11

Kildeer 3

Glaucous-winged Gull total 453 (325 – adults; 128 – juveniles)

California Gull 847

Thayer’s Gull 180

Mew Gull 24

Herring Gull 0

Ring-billed Gull 2

Western Gull 2

Heerman’s Gull 36

Adult Gull spp (Unidentified) 242

Juvenile Gull spp (Unidentified) 223

Savannah Sparrow 9

Fox Sparrow 1

Unidentified Sparrow 1

Junco 3

Horned Lark (2 in count week)

Pacific Wren 1

Routine chores continue. There were six visitors today. Two very self contained Environment Canada technical service officers came out to do annual maintenance on their weather station up on the tower. If you were looking on camera # 1 you may have had a close-up view of them at work, calibrating, replacing and maintaining their instruments in full climbing gear. Thanks go out to them as well for the help they gave us before leaving the island. Two national geographic photographers came out to get a sense of the diversity of wildlife and of course take photos. Two young people who may potentially become eco-guardians also visited. Thanks go out to Don for helping move fuel, a heavy job. Well done. Courtney drove Second Nature to get them all out here and back safely and she was accompanied by Jasper, volunteer extraordinaire.

 

 

July 22nd: Seawater needed for the desalination process

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On the 22nd of July we had a pretty windy day coming like usual from West with a choppy sea and around 25 knots. No visitors but many watchers between 10 and 15 of them.
Guy began filling up the seawater cistern, a pretty big underground space. It’s now half full and ok for a while. It has been a long process .You need to wait for the high tide and check often to be sure that the pump is not reached by the flooding water and also you have to feel up the gas tank every hour. The whole thing took roughly 10 hours.

July 17 to 19th : A calm week-end

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It has been 3 beautiful and sunny days .The wind was light at the most 20 knots in daytime and 30 knots on Sunday night .The North wind from the morning became West in the afternoon. The water temperature was still around 12 degrees Celsius. The water salinity stayed around 31.5 and the air at 5 OOAM 10 degrees. The barometric pressure was 903.1 HPa and 1001.8 HPa the day after.
We had no visitors and around the Rocks around 15 whale watchers.
Now we can count around 25 chicks from the front window. Some are already half size of the adults one but a few one have been born only a week ago. At date we found just one body and a half broken egg with the dead chick inside.
We did a few maintenance jobs like the cleaning of the students’ house windows and tidying up the basement in the eco-guardians place. Guy took off the ladder at the jetty, which has to be repaired, or changed .He sanded part of the trailer boat and begin repainting it with some rust paint.

Boat stories and visitors

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Monday was a busy day for vessels: 12 whale watchers and in the Juan de Fuca Strait ships were in a raw in the 2 directions …a lot to see by the windows. We also had 2 visitors from the college Courtney and Bobby (a volunteer). They brought on the Rock 3 propane tanks and 3 barrels of 200 liters each, for the oil transfer (1100 liters has to be transferred to the new tank and to the house tanks)

Last Large Oil tank Decommissioned

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Thursday 25th

The wind was light, the currents mild, no difference between low and high tide. Maybe it explains why the seawater was so warm compared to a week before 12.4
The visibility too was amazingly good .We could see the American coast so clearly and so far around 20 miles away. We can consider that day as the first real summer day in Race rocks: no wind or so little 4knots a joke, north direction, a mirror as a sea. At 5:30 the forecast was an increase to 20 knots around noon in fact we got it at 5pm in the afternoon.

It was a big day in Race Rocks. I would say an historic one because the big diesel tank has been disconnected (8000l) for a small one (450l). And all this made possible because of the efficient power of the sun .2 plumbers spent the day on the rock. At the end they double-checked to be sure that there were no more air bubbles and put under pressure the pipes…so now the big tank is ready to be hauled ashore …but this is another story…The 2 guys were so happy with their unusual day: splashes on the open boat and a trip at lunch time to the top of the tower. But everything took an end…and alone we were again and it was our turn to climb the 91 stairs and to enjoy this beautiful scenery.

Speaking about boats around the protected area: around 8pm we were surprised to see a zodiac with divers …and they were busy taking back aboard 2 of them? Other sightseeing: a submarine vessel from Esquimalt with a white smoke in the wake.

The water sampling confirmed a pretty high water temperature 11.8 Celsius