Rosedale Breakers!

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Tuesday, December 04, 2001

 Good Evening
TEMPERATURE: Max. 6.9C — Min 2.9C — Reset 4.8C — Rain 5.6 mm no Snow
posted by Carol or Mike S at 6:19 PM
HUMAN IMPACT: The racerocks.com group went to the island today to drop off a Sony camera with Carol and Mike. Carol and Mike have been requested by Fisheries (DFO) to record the ecological impact of the DND blasting that is to occur tomorrow at Rocky Point. Often, by the third blast, the sealions are scared off the rocks, possibly resulting in injury. Many of the sealions on Race Rocks have quite large scars on their undersides. Sealions are also scared by boats passing too close to the rocks.
ENVIRONMENT: We were treated to the rare sight of two Rosedale breakers. These breaking waves are the result of long, high energy waves, generated in the Pacific Ocean. When the waves reach Rosedale Reef, the most shallow point in the area, the pent up energy causes the wave to break. Refer to http://www.racerocks.com/racerock/data/data.htmto get a link to NOAA/NCEP Wavewatch for more information.We can see that the snow is building up on the Olympic Mountains with the snow line moving down almost daily. At this time of year the clearcuts are quite visible.
posted by Damien Guihen at 5:19 PM
Good Morning
WEATHER: Sky Overcast — Vis 15 Miles — Wind West South West 15 Knots — Sea 2 – 3 Foot Chop
posted by Carol or Mike S at 7:22 AM

Bald Eagle takes seagull

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Monday, December 03, 2001
Good Evening
TEMPERATURE: Max 7.1C — Min 4.3 Reset 4.7C — Rain 0.6 mm
Marine Life:Three mature Bald Eagles arrived in the area this morning about 11:15 ,one perched on the ‘look-out’ log on N.Rks while the other two shared a high point on the SE Rocks. all was quiet for over an hour when one of the two took flight, circled the rock twice,swooped behind the rock and reappeared with an immature gull in it’s talons.As the eagle with the gull landed the other two eagles started harassing the successful hunter to the point the it flew off leaving the now dead gull.I expected to see the other two eagles move in on the prey however they just remained on the ridge about a metre away from the gull just watching.Finally the third eagle came back,the other two took flight and the three eagles spent about 5 minutes flying at each other often with their talons out-stretched.At last one eagle left the fray swooped down made an unsuccessful grab for the gull then just continued flying north towards Pedder Bay.The other two flew over to West Race, sat there about 10 minutes then flew off towards Whirl Bay.Why the eagles left the gull I don’t know but it did not go to waste as the ever vigilant crows soon moved in for a meal!
A Great Blue Heron spent 11/2 hours in the East Bay area just below the tower then flew off towards Pedder Bay.Also a group of Black Oyster Catchers arrived just at sunset and settled among the rocks on the east side of Gr. Race.
posted by Carol or Mike S at 6:10 PM
Good morning
WEATHER: Sky Cloudy — Vis. 15 Miles — Wind West 7 Knots — Sea Rippled — Occasional Light Rain Shower
posted by Carol or Mike S at 7:32 AM

Students out for weekend

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Sunday, December 02, 2001
Good evening
TEMPERATURE: Max. 8.9C — Min. 5.1C — Reset 5.1C — Rain 5.5 mm
Human Interaction: A group of students under the direction of Laura Verhegge spent the weekend on Race Rocks doing some field work in environmental systems studies. Wanting to take advantage of the low tides which are occurring after dark the students arrived late Friday afternoon.The weather at times was cold,wet and windy -so windy in fact the the return to campus scheduled for 11:30 Saturday had to be postponed to Sunday forenoon.
posted by Carol or Mike S at 6:10 PM
Good morning
WEATHER: Sky Part Cloudy — Vis. 15 Miles – Wind East 8 Knots — Sea Rippled
posted by Carol or Mike S at 7:22 AM

Report on work with racerocks.com –June – December 2001

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Report on Ecological Reserve warden Garry Fletcher’s work with racerocks.com . June- December 2001
This past half year my focus has been on a number of areas related to the development of the racerocks.com site as an educational resource.
1. In June I had a student present a live webcast from us at Race Rocks at the AMTEC conference in Halifax.  At the same time we were demonstrating this technique to two representatives from APPLE computers Educational Staff, Keith Mitchell,Internet and NewMedia Technology, Apple Learning Interchange  from Texas and Jeff Orloff, Senior manager, Learning Products Education marketing and Solutions,  from the head office in California.
2. In the first two weeks of June, I again had two students staying out at Race Rocks presenting some live webcasts and working on the development of Quick time archived video and Quick Time Virtual reality  movies (see at) http://www.racerocks.com/racerock/archives/vrindex.htm
3. Development with Apple Learning Interchange of the Conference Room and The Discussion Forum for Race Rocks. In July, I worked with Keith Mitchell in the creation of these two interactive parts of the website. On the Meeting Room Conference site, we now are able to receive written questions from an audience and direct them around to different cameras while retaining the link with our mobile camera.  We used this with a presentation for a conference at South Western University in August.

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Eagle

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Tuesday, November 27, 2001
Good evening
TEMPERATURE: Max. 7.9ºC — Min. 5.0ºC — Reset 6.0ºC — Rain 0.4 mm
MARINE LIFE: 1 Mature bald Eagle arrived north Race Rocks 11:50 perched on the popular log – look out. where it stayed until 13:20, The Eagle then flew off towards Bentinck Island with out visiting any other areas of the M.P.A.
HUMAN INTERACTION: Prince of Whales tour boat 13:00 – 13:20 9 – 10 Passengers.
posted by Carol or Mike S at 6:14 PM
Good morning
WEATHER: Sky overcast — Vis. 15 miles — Wind north east 5 knots — Sea rippled
posted by Carol or Mike S at 7:25 AM

Harbour seal antics

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Monday, November 26, 2001
Good evening
TEMPERATURE: Max 8.1ºC — 5.0ºC — Reset 7.1ºC — Rain 1.2 mm — total so far this month 122.1 mm rain
MARINE LIFE: A great day -a bonus really when you consider it is now the last week of November. The Sea Lions did what they do best on calm days-catch up on their sleep.Most of the Northern S.L’s hauled out on Middle Rock while the Californias preferred to raft about in the kelp beds East and South of Gr. Race. The 5 Harlequins were back in the east bay and spent the afternoon by the boat dock.2 Mature Bald Eagles arrived about 9:30,one took up position on the high point on West Race and the other maintained look-out on the log on North Rocks.They stayed about 45 minutes then flew off towards Whirl Bay. 4 Harbour Seals enjoyed what I can only describe as the quintessential log rolling competition in the kelp,east side of Gr.Race. 3 seals on the log,3 seals off the log! It was the 4th seal wanting on that log that kept me watching for 35 minutes and yes, that 4th seal finally succeeded,unfortunately success was short lived. The log was caught up in the tide between the South East Rks. and Gr. Race and just twirled too much for the seals to stay on it.
posted by Carol or Mike S at 6:23 PM
Good morning
WEATHER: Sky clouydy — Vis. 15 miles — Wind calm — Sea rippled
posted by Carol or Mike S at 7:29 AM

Ocean’s Alive: A Marine Life Weekend

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“OCEAN’S ALIVE: A MARINE LIFE WEEKEND” Webcast Event from Race Rocks 

Originally published in The LINK, the college newspaper on January 10, 2002. number 7.

At the end of November, students gained the experience of live webcasting to contribute to a major marine educational project run by the Royal BC Museum. They were able to apply their own recently acquired technological skills to show in real time the Race Rocks Marine Protected Area.

GARRY FLETCHER GIVES US A REPORT

On the weekend of November 24-25, 8 students and Garry Fletcher participated in ” Ocean’s Alive – A Marine Life Weekend ” at the Royal BC Museum. Pearson College had been invited along with a dozen other marine interest groups to provide on-going displays over the two days of the weekend of projects designed to promote education and research in the local marine environment.

For half of Saturday and all of Sunday, Michael Kiprop and Olend Kondakciu operated the mobile camera 4 at Race Rocks while Garry and the students ran four computers and two projectors with the four live video streams coming from Race Rocks. Thanks to the loan of two Apple computer G4 Powerbook, one from from Soho Computers and from Westworld Computers in Victoria, they were able to present some of the on-line resources of the colleges racerocks.com website to some of the 2300 members of the public who went through the turnstyles of the museum over the weekend. Initial problems of receiving webcasts inside on the museum’s network were solved by bringing in and installing in the rafters our own Apple Airport Base station which allowed wireless transmissions of four video streams to the museum hallways.

Julia Clark and Virginie Lavallee , both second year Environmental Systems helped set up the equipment for the display and answer the public’s questions on Saturday morning while Damien Guihen of the racerocks activity helped Garry on the Saturday afternoon. For the Sunday presentations, Michael Cameron, Jaffar Saleh and Molly McKay, all members of the racerocks.com group each put in half a day for the presentations. It was a great opportunity to get out with the public to help promote the work we do at Race Rocks.

We at the college now almost take for granted the 24 hour live webcasts from Race Rocks and the weekly live webcast of various college presentations such as International Affairs. There was surprise and amazement from many visitors, however, who never realized before that they could get such interesting live images of the sea lions and seabirds right in their own nearby Strait of Juan de Fuca. Two couples touring Victoria from Great Britain were excited to know that from home they could now see the wildlife of the local area live on the internet. For times of webcasts from the campus, see the link to the webcast schedule from the college home page.

students webcast

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Sunday, November 25, 2001
Good evening
TEMPERATURE: Max 8.1ºC — Min. 5.3ºC — Reset 5.4ºC — Rain 9.8 mm
HUMAN INTERACTION:The 2nd Nature in to the dock a little after 9:00 with the students working on the live web presentation at the R.B.C.M.The sea was much calmer than yesterday but the rain was a definite inconvenience. One charter Dive boat in West Race area from 11:00 until just after 14:00. The students departed approximately 15:30 to return to campus.
MARINE LIFE: There was a group of 3 male and 2 female Harlequin Ducks in the East Bay most of the afternoon.
posted by Carol or Mike S at 6:08 PM
Good morning
WEATHER: Sky overcast — Vis. 15 miles — Wind west 5 knots — Sea rippled
posted by Carol or Mike S at 7:18 AM

Webcasting Crew out

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Saturday, November 24, 2001
Good evening
TEMPERATURE: Max. 8.5ºC — Min. 7.3 — Reset 8.1ºC — Rain 0.2 mm
HUMAN INTERACTION: Not the best weather for live web casting -however the “crew” arrived after a bumpy ride in the 2nd Nature and braved the very cold North Easterly.There were also the hardy divers on the ‘Juan de Fuca Warrior’ diving the West Race Area.
posted by Carol or Mike S at 6:05 PM
Good morning
WEATHER: Sky overcast — Vis. 15 miles — Wind north east 23 knots — Sea 3 foot moderate
posted by Carol or Mike S at 7:27 AM

DND Blasting

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Thursday, November 22, 2001
Good evening
TEMPERATURE: Max. 9.5ºC — Min 7.8ºC — Reset 8.7ºC — Rain 12.8 mm
MARINE LIFE: A typical November day weather wise however the Military detonation exercises on Bentinck Island were particularly disturbing for the Harbour Seals and Sea Lions. Once the blasting was done for the day the animals were still quite nervous and in fact when a Cuda Marine Whale Watching boat went by one rock(15:15-15:30) with approximately 120 sea lions hauled out over half of them stampeded into the water!
posted by Carol or Mike S at 6:11 PM
Good morning
WEATHER: Sky overcast — Vis. 10 miles — Rain — Wind north 21 knots — Sea 4 foot moderate — Low north east swell
posted by Carol or Mike S at 7:24 AM