Wildlife notes

I am not sure what to say about the female elephant seal. Elephant seals come to land twice a year, either to birth and mate, or to molt. It’s the wrong time of year for their molt and she hasn’t given birth yet, if she happens to be pregnant at all. She hasn’t moved much today only to flip direction and face east.

Facility work

I started the desalinator while the generator was running this morning – at this time of year with the low solar input, it can only be used while the generator is running. In addition to general cleaning, I sorted our overstuffed glove drawer. I needed a razor knife to remove the remnants of several pairs of rubber coated gloves that had “melted” or attached themselves to the drawer bottom. Unlike with socks, you can’t blame the drier monster for the unmatched pairs. A colourful little job a toddler would enjoy.

Single on the left.

• ran the desalinator
• 560 L of diesel fuel delivered
• cleaning, sweeping and sorting

DND activity

A loud rumble was heard in the morning.

Vessels

• Ecotourism: 3
• Private: 0

Weather

Partly cloudy most of the day, with showers late afternoon. Gently westerly winds 8-10 kts. Daytime temperature 9 degrees.

Generator use

From Jan 1, 2025 to Dec 31, 2025 the generator ran for 1531 hours. With an average fuel consumption of 4L/hr, a total of 6124L of diesel fuel were burned in 2025. Besides the cost of purchasing and delivering this amount of fuel, there is the carbon footprint to consider. Using a Google AI derived average of 2.6 kg of C02 produced per L of diesel burned, a total of 16 TONS of C02 were produced in 2025, not to mention the particulate matter, volatile organic compounds or nitrous oxides generated from burning the diesel. This sure makes a good case for replacing the old solar panels with more efficient ones and using faster charging Lithium batteries to reduce generator run time.

From the data I was able to download from 2023 to 2025 I produced a few charts and tables. We can see some irregular events like the high generator use in Jan 2024 and the higher use in the fall of of 2025 possibly from the increased use of the Student House (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Energy (kWh) produced by the generator each month from 2023 to 2025.

In terms of solar production we can see the great benefit derived from replacing the faulty connectors on the solar panels on June 11 2025 (Figure 2 and see the post from 18 | June | 2025 | Race Rocks Ecological Reserve-)

Figure 2. Energy (kWh) produced from solar each month from 2023 to 2025.

There is, as expected, a marked seasonal variation in generator use (Figure 3 and Table 1).  On average throughout the year, we are getting 60% of our energy from the generator and 40% from solar.  In an ideal world we would flip this ratio or even better, rely mainly on solar energy.  This brings me to why I took this deep dive into the data.  The notice from OpticsRE software package that the online data archives available for download were soon being reduced to 6 months (which prompted me to download all historical data) coincided with a request from Seafront to calculate average fuel consumption. Today we had an off-grid energy specialist visit Race Rocks.  Hopefully a more efficient, green energy power system is in our future!

Figure 3. Relative distribution of power from the generator and from solar for each month, using data from 2023 to 2025.

Table 1. Average monthly kWh produced by the generator and from solar, using data from 2023 to 2025.

Wildlife notes

No remarkable events to report. The female elephant seal moved another 20m today.

Facility work

• transferring diesel to the generator building and filling fuel tanks
• joining Greg, Richard and the energy specialist on a power system inspection
• downloading and formatting data, producing pivot tables and charts

Vessels

• Ecotourism: 0
• Private: 2 people on jet skis

Weather

Skies overcast. Winds light and variable. Glassy seas and fog by late afternoon. Daytime temperature 10 degrees.

It was a quiet wet day here. The grass is soggy, puddles are present and parts of the island are muddy.  This is my first winter here so seeing standing water is novel. It is also quieter than I expected as most of the sealions in the area are on the outer rocks. The female elephant seal is still here. She moved 3 times today covering a distance of 20m. Pregnant or not, it’s a hard slog for a seal to move about on land. She mostly sleeps and rarely makes a sound. Pregnant or well-fleshed?

Water puddles and the female elephant seal.

Facility work

• topped up battery fluids, cleaned battery tops, squeegeed the battery room floor
• sorted and entered data from old generator logs to determine fuel usage.
• downloaded and archived the OPTICSRE events and report data

Vessels

• Ecotourism: 1
• Private: 0

Weather

Skies overcast with periods of rain. Light winds 2 to 9 knots, NE veering to SE by evening. Daytime temperatures: low 9, high 11.

I’m a riddle in nine syllables
An elephant, a ponderous house
…………….…
On the rock and there’s no getting off.

I’ve named our new visitor, who I have been told is likely a pregnant elephant seal, “Sylvia” – inspired by her poem “Metaphors”, parts of which are shown above. I watch and wonder if she is a first-time mom or does she even know she is pregnant? She is calling out in the dark of night. I hope she stays, gives birth here, and the pup survives its first month. Hopefully our camera arrives from the repair shop sooner than the pup!

This is just a quick post on my first evening here to share the exciting news. The female arrived on Race Rocks January 10th. The photos were taken by Cedric Torres.

Finishing this term, will be back in the spring!

Ecological Notes:

• Still no Elephant Seals
• Cooler, mostly NE winds seems to affect the birds a lot…… some days lots of birds, and others, no smaller birds at all
• Large amount of eagles, both mature and juvenile, here every morning, many here all day. I’ve counted as many as 29 at a time. They seem to be spending a lot of time hunting gulls.

Visitors:

• 2 guests here for the Christmas bird counts

Facility Work:

• Cleaned windows on the house, and solar panels. Nice to do them in the cold and hopefully just before some rain as it reduces streaking.

• Although a full cleaning is needed every now and then, it’s important to keep the battery tops clean to notice any problems sooner

• It seems the algae growth came on very suddenly, pressure washing is the best way to clean the paths

• Swept out all the buildings, and areas where the tanks were removed

• Cleaned the main house preparing for my departure, including the fridge I do once a month

• All the regular tasks including desalinator runs, fuel transfers, firewood, battery maintenance and water sampling
• Submitted all month end reports

DND events:

• none

Noted Vessel Traffic:

• Occasional Eco-Tourism vessels

Weather Events:

Recent weather has been pretty consistent NNE winds 5-15kts, High overcast and calm seas. Low pressure and high tides consistently wash over the jetty.

** Any wildlife photos taken at the furthest distance possible, and may be cropped to improve detail! **

Weather – Current:

https://tempestwx.com/station/190757/

Weather – Past:

https://tempestwx.com/history/190757

Ecological Notes:

• The Snow goose apparently left
• Smaller Sea Otter, and  Northern Fur Seal reported to me by Eco-Tourism vessels
• Still no Elephant Seals
• Although not uncommon to see eagles hunting gulls here, One day in particular was quite extraordinary …. up to 7 Eagles in the air at the same time chasing gulls, it was like a fighter plane dogfight!
• Returning to the reserve after a personal time off, the boat was swarmed by Orca, about 20 feet from the jetty! I believe the sea lion they were chasing must have jetted under the boat as they would not leave. They did eventually get their lunch as proven by the gulls frenzy on the scraps.

Visitors:

• Shorefront team for various delivers and ongoing maintenance and clean up

Facility Work:

• Richard from Shorefront team moved fuel from various old tanks to the Student building tank.
• Prepared one old tank for removal
• Removed piping from the large(old)diesel tank from the structure by the the Generator building, too it apart and removed it from the island
• Regular battery maintenance and fuel transfers
• A couple more desalinator runs (running when the Generator runs during the day, it often runs at night)
• Changed oil and filters on the Generator
• Sometimes you have to follow the little beeps too!

• Replaced the starter cord on the gusher pump (used to fill the cistern)

DND events:

• some blasts spread over time

Noted Vessel Traffic:

• A couple private boats transiting
• Occasional Eco-Tourism vessels

Weather Events:

• Monday, December 15:
  • Sky: High overcast occasional rain
  • Wind: N 5-10kts early morning, shifting to W and rising as high as 45kts over the day, tapering to 20kts by midnight
  • Sea:  light chop turning to 3-4ft waves by afternoon
  • Temperature Low 9.3^oC, High 10.5^oC

• Tuesday, December 16:
  • Sky: Overcast with a few rain showers
  • Wind: ESE winds 5-10kts during the day rising rapidly late evening to W 48kts
  • Sea:  Light chop all day
  • Temperature Low 8^oC, High 10^oC

• Wednesday, December 17:
  • Sky: overcast with sunny patches
  • Wind: W gusting to 60kts over night, dropping to 25-30kts early morning, continuing to drop to 5-10kts by evening
  • Sea:  3-4 ft waves and swells 
  • Temperature Low 12^oC, High 20^oC

High winds find anything that’s not screwed down

Although it would have been good to get some more fire logs, at least the wind direction didn’t bring a ton of debris to the ramp.

** Any wildlife photos taken at the furthest distance possible, and may be cropped to improve detail! **

Weather – Current:

https://tempestwx.com/station/190757/

Weather – Past:

https://tempestwx.com/history/190757