On July 16, 2006 the barge was moved on site for the installation of the piling. The first stage was the deployment of anchors for the positioning of the drilling barge. I captured the following pictures from the remote Camera 5.
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- Early Sunday morning they barge leaves Vancouver and arrives to be placed in position to deploy the anchors
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- The tide is running at several knots today.
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- So stabilization is accomplished by the two tugboats.
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- Crew on board the barge
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- Concrete block anchors on deck.
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- The crane lifts an anchor block and when the barge is positioned at predetermined locations..
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- block is lowered to the seabed
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- Next a large buoy is raised from the deck –
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- swings to the rear of the barge
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- and lowers it to the surface.
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- detach the crane line from the buoy
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- atcher boat is used to
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- Several buoys are already in place. Second Nature stands by in the background.
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- Location of three of the Buoys installed on the East sideof the channel
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- A large flock of gulls was on the middle island during the operation
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- Normally at this time of year there are no sea lions present. This one turned up today.
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- The gulls….
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- and cormorants …
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- and pigeon guillemots are not disturbed on the nesting grounds of Great Race Rocks.
On July 18, 2006 Chris Blondeau and Mike Cameron dived on the west centre anchor blocks and took video of the blocks and chains and some of the effects on surrounding organisms. They also navigated on the same dive to the dredged site as well and we see the excavation and the pile of dredged materials in this video.