Category Archives: weather notes

Grey

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Over the last few days the weather has been consistently overcast and there has been a consistent E/NE wind between 10-20 NMPH. It rained briefly today around noon.

In the morning the DND was burning invasive species (broom, Gorse) at Rocky Point, smoke visible.

-taking measurements for wood stove installation
-cutting and storing fire wood
-planning for solar panel replacement and tilt
-cleaning solar panels daily as there has not been much moisture
-reviewing new standard operating procedures manual
-got help from Jonathan (Pearson IT) to fix some problems with programs/files on station computer

Planning/making list for minor repairs:

-a water pipe on engine room roof needs replacing
-lower valve on rain water tank leaks when opened
-air vent pipe on main house letting water in which collects in the duct.
-hose nozzle on engine room roof broken

Cold weather

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Friday morning the wind was blowing 25 NMPH NE and picked up throughout the day gusting to 40 NMPH in the evening with waves >5ft breaking on the jetty.  The wind brought cold weather from the interior with temperatures below 0 deg C.  A cold weather notice was issued by the Metchosin Fire Chief warning of windchill over night reaching below -15 deg C.  This morning temperature was -2.6 deg C, sunny, and winds had dropped by noon.  Sea water temp has fallen to 7.4 deg C today.

I ran heating coils on the lines out of the freshwater tank and into the main house. Kept a heater on low in the desalinator building overnight and shut off water to assist house and drained pipes.  No freeze up problems detected so far.

There was 1 dive boat and 1 ecotour boat in the reserve this afternoon.

Census yesterday (dec 6) at 11:00 from the tower:

47 California sea lions (2 sealions with plastic hoops lodged around their necks)
174 Stellar sea lions
2 harbour seals
5 elephant seals (on W rock, 1 male)
1 river otter
280 gulls
383 cormorants
2 Canada geese
1 raven
3 Eagles
1 Sparrow

Change of Guardian, Snow

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I got a ride out to Race Rocks today with Erik to start my winter shift.  Pedder Bay was covered in ice up to around the college’s main docks.  Courtney updated me on operating procedures and returned with Erik. There was supposed to be a chimney cleaner coming too but it has been snowing since this morning and it was too slippery.

Chunk was in the water by the jetty when we arrived and came up the ramp. He is so big that i thought it was the alpha male, Misery, at first. The scars, from getting chewed up by Misery, are visible on his back.

The snow stopped before sunset so I cleaned off the solar panels. The tilted panels were partly clear whereas the horizontal panels had accumulated about an inch of snow.

rainbows

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A day of squalls. Sunny periods, followed by sideways rain. Lot’s of rainbows all day.

This photo was forwarded on to me out at Race Rocks from a client on one of the eco-tour companies that operates out of Victoria and is a frequent visitor to the reserve. Because of the challenges in tranquilizing a marine mammal, there is very little that can be done for these animals. However, this incident highlights the fact that eco-tour companies can play a critical role in marine conservation by reporting these incidents and by educating their clients about issues surrounding marine debris. There are some great programs out there that focus on shoreline cleanups. Keep an eye out and volunteer for your local beach  cleanups. They usually happen in the summer and are a lot of fun.

For older posts in the log on the topic of sea lion entanglement or ‘rings’ see this link, and for newer incidences search the tag “entanglement“. For injured marine mammal photos from a previous eco-guardian Ryan Murphy see this flikr site.

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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.

Time Change

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Light to Moderate West winds all day. Clear skies. West swell.

With the high tides and the swell running most of the animals in the reserve are still staying on Greater Race Rock, with some sea lions on the south rocks. There were some massive groups of sea gulls out on the water today.

With the time change, remember that the times written in the Canadian tide and current guides are the actual times of high and low tides, and max flood, ebb, and slack tides (up until yesterday you should have been adding an hour).

[Daily Marine Conservation Link]
Sylvia Earle is an all-star marine scientist, a tireless conservation advocate, and a powerful and charismatic speaker. In this TED talk she talks about ‘the vital blue heart of our planet’ and our need to protect it. And if you have a moment look at Mission Blue which was formed in response to Sylvia Earle’s TED Prize Wish, where she urged people “to use all means at your disposal — films, expeditions, the web, new submarines — to create a campaign to ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas; Hope Spots large enough to save and restore the blue heart of the planet.”

storm warning in effect!

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Light SE wind in the morning. 3ft East swell.
Midday it switched to 25 kts West.
Late afternoon it was blowing 45 kts West. With a 5ft+ West swell.

Bird Count
26 Canada Geese spent the day sheltering from the storm on Greater Race Rock
670 Adult Gulls + 96 Juvenile Gulls = 766 Gulls total
20 Oyster Catchers
136 Cormorants
I don’t know where the Turnstones and Sparrows hide during bad weather

Screenshot 2013-11-03 09.43.35

How I counted Birds: The nice thing about bad weather is that it forces all the birds to come to Greater Race Rock because of the waves surging over the outer islands. They also tend to sit in organized groups when it’s really windy. So I took photos of all the groups of birds and using a ‘cell counter’ macro in a great free program called ImageJ I counted all the birds and tallied the results.

 

[Daily Marine Conservation Link]
Sea stars up and down both coasts of North America are experience a mass die-off event now called Sea Star Wasting Syndrome. In recent years the populations of sea stars has been extremely high in the Salish Sea, and in September 2013 reports of mortality events started coming in from divers. A collaborative research effort is now underway and the Vancouver Aquarium is hoping that divers start to participate in some Citizen Science.
The Howe Sound Research and Conservation team is tracking this event by mapping observations of healthy and sick sea stars  but they need data! So if you see any sea stars while diving report it to this website

 

 

 

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

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)

PC divers

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A bit cooler than previous days, but otherwise a lovely overcast day with sunny periods.
A bit of SE wind in the morning, glassy calm in the evening.

Tour boats: 9, mostly in the afternoon
A Winter Wren has been hanging out by the desalinator shed

Jamieson and Maciek on the island today
Erik + 6 divers, 3 surface tenders, and Laura Verhegge came out for a dive off the jetty
Maciek left for the college with the dive boat

Incident with a tour boat operating over top of the divers, despite a properly posted dive flag and hand signals to back off. Settled it over the radio.
Consider making it policy to call a securite on the radio to inform operators that there are divers in the water.

-A box of supplies was delivered by Erik for a variety repairs
-Scoped out plumbing repairs in the student house
-Started cleaning student house (murdered flies, cleaned windows and sills, vacuumed)
-Ran dealinator
-Practiced docking the boat on the jetty in the evening with the ‘Jamieson School of Boat Handling’