Sunday September 8th
Today we spent a lot of time on the fence again. We painstakingly went through each section to ensure that charge was being held the whole way through. This was a very tedious process and we still don’t have the voltage up to where we want it to be…. but there have been no pinniped breaches yet, so fingers crossed!
Today, Scott and I climbed the lighthouse tower to complete our first wildlife census. As a marine ecologist, I have a lot of experience counting fish underwater. However, counting over 600 Sea lions that all look like overlapping brown logs or trying to count birds that keep on flying away or are hidden between all the sea lions was way harder. With that said, being a top the tower made everything much easier to see and to conceptualize on a greater scale.
While we were up there we also got to enjoy a couple of humpback whales engaging in tail slapping or “lobtailing” behaviour for well over 30 minutes. It is thought that the sound and force generated by the slaps frighten the bait fish into tighter schools making them easier to hunt. Based off gull activity, there were definitely a lot of bait balls around, so hopefully we will get to see more of this behaviour in the coming days!
- Water Sample
- Ran Generator
- Washed Solar Panels
- Patched and checked new electric fence
- Island animal census
Whale Watching Vessels: 25
Private Vessels: 7
Census Results:
Birds:
- Turnstones: 15
- Killdeer: 1
- Gulls: 528
- Cormorants: 70
- Oystercatchers: 2
- Canada Goose: 6
Mammals:
- Stellar Sea Lions: 115
- California Sea Lions: 497
- Sea Lions (Too Far for confident ID): 205
- Harbour Seals: 63
Weather: Slightly Hazy/Overcast. Wind NW Building all day to ~ 15knts