Weather
- Visibility: 15+ miles
- Wind: 0-5 knots E; in the afternoon 15 knots W; early evening 28 knots W.
- Sky: clear
- Water: calm
- Today’s high temperature of 17.1 c was a new observed record, beating last year’s mark of 14.7 C.
Ecological
- Still unable to find any black oystercatcher nests. I think it’s probably too early for them to be laying any eggs though.
- Discovered a new nesting pair of Canada Geese today.
- 11 elephant seals on Great Race.
- 5 on Middle Rock.
- One elephant seal ventured out to the end of the jetty to look around.
- Later an elephant seal went up to a Canada Goose nest and inspected the area. I think it was the same seal from the jetty.
- Found a broken up Canada Goose egg not far from a different nest. Wonder who did that?
- Found some cool bones on the rocks today, including a fin and some teeth.
- A fleet of about 19 kayaks passed by the South Rocks this morning, and this spooked the sea lions who all ended up in the water.
- While I suspect there was a stampede, I didn’t actually see it.
- As the kayaks assembled in the SW portion of the reserve, a large group of sea lions swam towards the kayaks to investigate. Not something I have seen before!
Maintenance
- Cleaned the solar panels.
- Performed a distilled water volume estimate: 50-55 litres.
- More goose work.
Boats
- Two eco-tours came by today.
- A couple of small fishing boats passed by.
- One of the fishing boats looked like it was going too fast.
- A sailboat passed by. One of the occupants gave the buoys a good long look.
- Speaking of which, the “lost buoys” from yesterday reappeared this morning around the same time. Are they perhaps anchored there, and only appear at low tide?
Other
- While lying in bed at 22:30 I heard two loud DND blasts.