The wind dropped and sky cleared up today. I counted 15 bald eagles on West rock and Middle rocks in the morning
Angus Mathews, Executive Director of the Shaw Ocean Discovery Centre and long time champion of the Race Rocks Ecological Reserve, visited Race Rocks with some staff members from the Shaw Centre as well as Bruce Obee, freelance author and photographer, Todd Golumbia, Ecologist formerly with the Gulf Islands National Park and Garry Fletcher, Race Rocks Ecological Reserve warden. They came out on a Eagle Wing Tours boat with Brett Soberg, co-owner of Eagle Wing and long time tour guide, who carefully manoevered the sleek fiberglass boat, with three 250 hp outboards, alongside the unforgiving concrete jetty.
All images below were taken by Bruce Obee:
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- Bruce took several videos of the sealions on south rock. There is a branded one in this image.
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- Some of the group of black oystercatchers south of the energy Building
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- Chunk was the only elephant seal on shore today
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- Garry pointing out the unique color patterns in the upper tidepools
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- Angus Matthews
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- Alex Fletcher explaining the Integrated Energy System to the visitors
Angus and Garry both have a long history with Race Rocks so we had a good tour and heard some good stories. Todd noticed that one of the black oyster catchers on the south side of the island was banded, likely a banding he had done in the gulf islands. We weren’t able to get a reading on the ID number so I will try to follow up with this information.
The Shaw Centre has initiated the Salish Sea Institute. To learn more about this important project check out this article by Bruce: http://bruceobee.com/readers-picks-2/ and this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SNhwzhk-oA&feature=youtu.be
One private sports fishing boat toured around in reserve today.
-9 visitors to the island today
-did some preparations for visitors including installing bumpers on jetty
-toured island with visitors
-cut, chopped, stacked firewood
-did some tinkering with boat house door. It has new hardware installed and is working better than before but is still derailing sometimes. Maybe installing some roller brackets at the bottom could help keep it aligned.
-observed nice sunset