Category Archives: Facility work

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

May 26

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It was another steady, west by southwest day, blowing 15 to 20 knots, from morning to night and clearing out the clouds for a glorious afternoon and evening. There was just enough marine haze on the horizon to make a great sunset. This morning barometer gradually rose to 1016 hPA and then started a slow decline after noon ending up at 1014hPA just before 8:00 PM. The forecast is calling for strong westerlies to continue with a mix of sun and cloud.

Only four whale watching boats were observed in the Ecological Reserve today and everyone was on their best behaviour.

Ecological happenings were subtle today. More sealions are hauling out on Great Race including a few very chunky Stellers bulls. The California Sealions seem to putting the call out for others within hearing range to come and bark in concert. There are more birds mating wherever you look, the Canada Geese goslings are growing incredibly fast and the bull kelp is now forming a broad canopy even on the high tide. The gull bolus contents are shifting to more ‘forage fish’ bone content from the earlier strong bias toward chiton plates and the adults are feeding each other in practice for parenthood?

The Bald Eagles continue to fly in and scare all the gulls, geese and oystercatchers and it looked like they caught something today, but I am not sure what..

Chris and Courtney brought Second Nature out in the afternoon with two visitors from Scotland, (an alumna and her husband), and the two relief eco-guardians Guy and Christine who will be here for the summer. Chris, Courtney and Guy delivered diesel for the generator, using the derrick, barrels, a drum dolly and a fair bit of sweat. It looked scary to me but they pulled it off with aplomb and Chris said it is easier, safer and less risky than the old method, so that is really great.

My chores today were routine. I am going to post this now and update it with photos later in case the Internet goes down again in between. Must run and shut down the generator.

 

 

Crankypants Has a Number.

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By mid-morning, the light southwesterly winds left over from yesterday’s blow had wandered over to south and they stayed southerly until early evening when they turned back to west. The barometer continued the slow ascent begun early yesterday, throughout the day. Although there was a mix of sun and clouds today, light levels were high and reached over 1000 W/m2 at the peak. Forecasters are calling for strong westerly winds again, with a chance of showers Thursday.

Four Whale Watching vessels were noted in the Ecological Reserve today, visiting on return from the west, heading towards Victoria. No sports fishing vessels were noted in the ER.

The Canadian Coast Guard Helicopter (Fisheries and Oceans) dropped by today to service the light, which went dark the night before last. Dave (pilot) and Derek (technician) were a welcome sight in their lovely little Messerschmidt, which was carefully put down at the base of the light tower stairs.

 

Dave and Derek preparing for take off.

Dave and Derek preparing for take off.

Messerschmidt tower heli flag

 

Ten Whimbrels stopped for a rest and a feed today. These amazing migrators are on their way to the arctic tundra from South America and it was a treat to see them here.

Whimbrels stopped for a rest and a feed in the inter-tidal today.

Whimbrels stopped for a rest and a feed in the inter-tidal today.

Whimbrel M

I kept an eye on the Bald Eagles today and yes, they are fishing.

It was a right "hand" catch, transferred to both feet and then tucked up under to the tail to hide it from sight.

It was a right “hand” catch, transferred to both feet and then tucked up under  the tail to hide it from sight.

Baea fish hooked Baea catch

Ten of the elephant seals managed to go through the measuring device today while I was sitting, waiting for them with the camera. I also spotted tags on the young female Northern Elephant Seal with serious skin issues. I may have mentioned her in a previous blog, I called her psoriasis sister last fall and Courtney named her crankypants in spring 2014. She is very vocal and easily disturbed by the other seals. She is usually off by herself but today she was caught in a traffic jam for daily ablutions, which really seemed to upset her. I have observed her many times last fall and this spring but never noticed the tags before. She moves as if in pain, complains loudly and leaves a trail of blood. She has many open wounds that look like holes and cracks. The right tag is number A114 and although it is difficult to read the left side, it is perhaps A476. She has all four tags still.

 

Crankypants has a tag number now A114.

Crankypants has right  tag number  A114.

MianA114R_A476?left?

A branded Steller’s Sealion # 411R was noted today. She looks big for a female but that is what the record says, branded as a pup in July, 2005 at Rogue Reef, which is in the very southern end of Oregon. I will check with Pat Gearin on this identification.

Euju#411RApr29_15

There were no visitors other than the Coast Guard crew and maintenance chores were all routine.

March 17

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Sunny, light rain in the late afternoon
Wind: 3-9 knots NE in the morning, 1-6 knots SE in the afternoon, calm at 18:00, 9-15 W in the evening
Air Temperature: Low 7.6°C, High 10.7°C
Ocean Temperature: 8.9°C

The morning was filled with chores: collecting garbage, tidying, cleaning the solar panels and mistaking a swimming seal for a sea otter (three times). The sea otter, which visited the ecological reserve during the winter hasn’t been seen within the past few weeks.

I was off the reserve for a few hours in the afternoon to drop off garbage and pick up gas, groceries, deionized water for the batteries and cleaning supplies. It happened to coincide with Elizabeth May giving a talk at the college.

The sea lions were very active and vocal leading up to the sunset at 19:21.

There were no boats seen in the reserve today.