Tag Archives: california sea lion

Another New Bird!

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Yesterday morning as I was walking back from turning the generator on, I noticed the gulls were causing a ruckus. Usually they do that when an eagle is flying by so I was looking to see where it might be. I spotted it but thought it maybe looked a little fluffier and stubbier than a typical eagle. It soon landed on the crane and I quickly realized it wasn’t an eagle…and it had horns!?

This is the first time (both at Race Rocks and ever) that I’ve seen a Great Horned Owl! It only spent a few minutes on the crane before flying off to middle rocks where it remained for the rest of the day. How cool!

I have not seen the booby in a few days and the fur seal seems to have left as well, but Oswald the little blond sea otter is still here! Tonight I watched as he dove for urchins and then brought them back up to open on his belly. Now if only he would pick a closer kelp bed so I don’t have to squint through my binoculars to watch him!

Sea lion numbers are still low, I think anyone who hadn’t been here before would think I’m crazy for saying that. This is my third October here and there really just aren’t as many as usual! The same goes for the humpback whales, usually I can’t look out a window without seeing 3 or 4, but lately I find myself really having to search.

Just one sea lion where there would usually be hundreds.

Not that I am complaining by any means, it’s incredible here regardless. I just wonder why numbers may be down? Is the El Niño changing things up? Is the fishing better elsewhere? Who knows! It’ll be interesting to see if numbers increase or decrease over the next month.

8 eco-tourism vessels today, 3 DND blasts with minimal disturbance, and facility work consisted of topping up batteries, and replacing/inventorying the fire extinguishers.

 

The 5 Pinniped Species in BC…in 5 Minutes!

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There are 5 species of pinnipeds in British Columbia, they are:

  1. Harbour seal
  2. Northern elephant seal
  3. California sea lion
  4. Steller sea lion
  5. Northern fur seal

Yesterday, I saw all 5 species within a 5 minutes span!

When I was here in December 2024, I spotted a Northern fur seal hauled out near the jetty. At that point, it was the first fur seal in 40 years to be seen on Race Rocks. Since then there have been fur seal sightings within and around the reserve, but still infrequently. A couple eco-guardian vessels alerted me to the fur seal out on the west rocks. Of course, that is the further rock from me so it’s incredibly difficult to spot anything out there. However, I was able to find him with my long zoom! I got an even better photo today when I joined Greg for a quick tour around the reserve.

Sleeping on the rocks!

The other sightings are less exciting, there are sea lions everywhere both California and Steller, and harbour seals are always around.

Although, I’m always excited to see an elephant seal so it’s fun that she’s hanging around. She’s young and I wonder if she’s been here before because she’s only hauling out in the sea lion areas and hasn’t come up to the grass yet.

In other news, I also spotted a sea otter this morning which is very exciting! It was also quite far and directly in the sun but I’m hoping it’ll come closer!

 

 

How about now?

The weather has been great lately which makes for excellent animal spotting! Can’t wait to see what else I’ll find!

Marine Mammal Rescue!

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It has been a fantastic few days out here! The team from the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue Society came out with DFO to disentangle the California sea lion that I first spotted last October.

He was sleeping up high on the boat launch with made landing at the jetty tricky because we didn’t want to scare the sea lions and risk him going in the water. Instead, DFO dropped the rescue team off the south side of the island. The current was strong so we weren’t sure it would be possible, but they were able to safely nose the rhib into the rocks behind the generator building and the team came up the rocks. This ended up being great because we could approach the entangled sea lion without scaring him, and there are significantly less sea lions on the south side lately, so the disturbance was minimal.

For those who don’t already know, when I’m not at the lighthouse, I work full time as a Registered Veterinary Technologist with the Marine Mammal Rescue Society. This was my team coming out, and disentanglements are one of my favourite parts of the job. Doing this work at Race Rocks is especially meaningful: I can help save an animal, and I’m often the person who finds and monitors them, coordinates with the team, and supports the rescue. Afterward, I’m able to continue monitoring the animal in the following days, which is incredibly rewarding.

The rescue itself was straight forward, Dr. Haulena darted the entangled sea lion with a sedation protocol that allows us to approach and work with the animal, but doesn’t sedate them so deeply that if they end up going into the water they won’t drown. Thankfully, after the initial shock of the dart, the sea lion only moved a few feet before settling back down on the ramp. The sedation takes about 12 minutes to take effect, at which time we moved in. We quickly discovered that the entanglement material was a thick industrial rubber band, these bands have a wide variety of uses in the marine field and can often be found on commercial crab traps or used in other pot fisheries. Once the band was removed, we place a flipper tag on each of his fore flippers, these are not satellite tags, but they can help us identify the animals in future sightings.

A great example of this is the animal Eva helped us with in August. He is still here and I was able to determine that by taking a photo of his tags and then comparing them to our spreadsheet. Each tag has a unique number on it that allows to ID the animal when resighted. I’ll insert a photo of the animal we rescued in August below:

Once we were done, we gave him an injection to reverse the sedation and then we watched from the top of the of the boat launch as he woke up, stretched out, and then entered the water and swam off. He later hauled back out on the rocks to the left of the jetty and is currently still there as I write this. I can’t imagine the relief he must be feeling and I’m already excited to see him here again next year!

You can watch the rescue video here: https://youtu.be/EJJ7pKWvKIY?si=JR4Ft_c99E8h6POc

 

The team was gone by 12:30, and with them they took my dad whose been here this first week with me. It’s been so special having him here and spending time with him, he is the one who taught me my love for the ocean and he enjoys it out here just as much as I do!

Aside from the excitement of the disentanglement, things have been quite calm around here. The weather has been incredible, glassy seas and no wind, full sun and whales everywhere! Today is supposed to reach 40 knot winds (close to 80km/hr) and raining, so today I’ve be battening the hatches and making sure everything is securely put away and I have everything I need in the house. The generator is being run manually at the moment so I will need to make a couple outside treks to turn that on and off but other than that my plans include a fire and storm watching from inside. I’m very curious to see how that affects Saturday’s census!

And lastly, we have a young female elephant seal back at Race Rocks! She has been hanging out with the Stellers on the South rocks but hopefully she comes up to the grass soon!

Facility work for the past couple days:

  • Ran the generator
  • Cleaned main house windows
  • Topped up batteries
  • Fixed the main house kitchen sink (thanks dad!)
  • Lots of fence repair
  • Cleaned solar panels
  • Storm prep: lowered the flag, secured the electric fence as best as possible, general site clean-up.
  • Oil change in Honda generator
  • Ran the last remaining line of electric fence tape behind the main house

Vessels:

  • Ecotourism: average of 15 per day
  • Private: average of 4 per day

Visitors:

  • DFO team: 4 people
  • VAMMR team: 6 people
  • Greg/Richard for supply drop off.

Beautiful Census Day

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After yesterdays rain, today was super beautiful with some dramatic clouds and even a rainbow! But it was still super windy with waves breaking on the Jetty most of the morning.

Windy day at the Jetty

You can see a hint of the rainbow in the background …

In other news, the Entangled CSL is still around, and also during todays census I spotted a Stellar who has a bad gash… prop strike maybe?

 

Facilities Work (Yesterday and Today)

  • Ran Desal (250 L)
  • Cleaned pathways
  • Chopped wood
  • Cleaned out house fridge
  • Checked and filled Battery levels
  • Filled Generator

Biological Census

  • Canada Geese – 14
  • Snow Geese – 2
  • Turnstones – 10
  • Oystercatchers – 4
  • Seagulls – 183
  • Cormorants – 530
  • Elephant Seal – 1
  • Harbour seals – 4
  • California Sea Lions – 723
  • Stellar Sea Lions – 300

 

Saturday Update & Census

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It’s been a busy couple of days out here!

The humpbacks have been breaching, tail lobbing, lunge feeding, and lounging in and around the reserve. You really can’t look out any window here and NOT see one.

Yesterday we had a diesel drop off, the battery room door is now new and functional, and we have a new YSI that turns on!

An oil change was also done on the generator so we are good to go!

This morning the fence didn’t need any repairs (a true miracle), and thanks to a text from my cousin who happened to be on a nearby ecotourism boat, I saw a fur seal!

A northern fur seal doing what we call “jug handling”

The Pearson students arrived this afternoon and will be staying until tomorrow morning, it’s always nice to have visitors!

Facility Work:
Topped up battery electrolytes
Diesel delivery
Topped up diesel in generator
Oil chance generator

Vessels:
Private: 5
Ecotourism: 16

Census:

Mammals:

  • Steller sea lion: 455
  • California sea lion: 902
  • Harbour seal: 105
  • Elephant seal: 1
  • Northern fur seal: 1
  • Humpbacks: 20+

Sleepy elephant seal

 

Harbour seal defending its rock!

Ouch

Birds:

  • Gulls: 520
  • Cormorants: 832
  • Canadian geese: 10
  • Oyster catcher: 1
  • Sparrows/Swallows: so many but I can’t ID them without a photo and they were flitting around too fast for me to get any!

Sept. 19, 2025 – Animal Census Day

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Luckily for me it was a clear morning for the day of my first animal census. With coffee and binos in hand I headed up to the top of the lighthouse tower and began the count of every seal, sea lion, whale, and bird in sight… needless to say it took me much longer than expected! The sun was quickly heating up the tower and by the time I was finished counting the hundreds of sea lions, beads of sweat were dripping down my brow. Despite the heat, it was plenty worth the effort as I spotted some interesting animals – most notably, a Northern Fur seal! This little fellow was hiding in amongst the Cali’s and Stellers on the East corner of the island, not making many friends as it was crawling overtop the sea lion’s bodies and getting consistently yelled and snapped at.

Animal Census Report:

* Note the animal census was time limited to the morning only. Due to bright sun & shadows, cormorants were not distinguished by species.

Mammals:

  • Steller sea lion: 371
  • California sea lion: 906
  • Harbour seal: 89
  • Northern Fur seal: 1
  • Humpback Whales: 6

Birds:

  • Glaucus-winged Gull: 201
  • California Gull: 1
  • Western Gull: 6
  • Cormorant Spp: 701
  • Black Turnstones: 8
  • Surfbird: 14
  • Savanah’s Sparrow: 1
  • Western Sandpiper: 1

Facility work:

It was a busy day trying to fit in all my tasks on top of the animal census, as I was leaving the island for the weekend. Thankfully Richard was patient with me trying to get packed to go last minute.

  • Electric fence repairs – corner post on jetty snapped and got replaced.
  • Cleaned solar panels
  • Water sampled – just in time!
  • Batteries filled (early as I would be away on Saturday)
  • Animal census
  • Compost and tidying of house

Weather:

  • Sky: Mainly clear and sunny
  • Wind: 5-10kts
  • Sea state: calm
  • Air temp: 23C

I was sad to be leaving for any time at all, given the excitement of the animal census. Thankfully, Bella and the students were incoming to keep an eye on the place in my absence. I’ll be back to it Monday morning!

 

Census postponed

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Wildlife : Ready to take first census since arriving but fog had other plans. Could not seen west, middle, turbine or north islets. Postponed until Sunday.

Watched a California seal lion (CSL) walk past the east side of boat house to the east side of the helicopter pad and then pull itself up the wall onto the pad. Impression!

Midday noted a crow being chased by a group of seagulls around the island. Left in short order.

Weather: Heavy fog and overcast all day

Facility work:

  • Fence repair on north and south sides. Encouraged three CSLs back to their side of the fence.
  • Cistern restoration work continuing
  • Cleaned solar panels.
  • Checked battery water levels and topped up as required.
  • Temperature and salinity readings at max tide.

Visitors:

Students from LBPC left at noon. Hope they all will have many more occasions to visit and study on this very special place.

Restoring the concrete cistern

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Up early to fix the southern electric fence, then onto solar panels and sea water temperature and salinity measurements. Took inventory of First Aid kits, expired items. Generator ran today.

Richard T. returned to pump out and start work on the large concrete cistern, in hopes that the desalinator and restored cistern may eventually bring an end to the paucity of usable water. Two killdeer and one turnstone seen on the western part of the main  island.

 

August 23 Weekly Census

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First things first! Time to check out the solar panels, while at the same time, keeping track of what animals and birds are being seen. Census is usually conducted on Friday, but since I didn’t arrive until mid-afternoon, I opted to do it today.

The solar panels were in better shape than I expected given the look of the Science Building windows. I remembered all of the valves that needed to be opened to provide water on the generator building roof, so a single trip up the ladder was all that was needed. Once those were taken care of, it was off to tackle the Science Building. There are some great new tools available for reaching the second story windows, but they are quite unwieldy, especially for someone who is just a little over 5 feet tall! As I feared, the gull artwork was baked on, so although there was improvement, the windows were not fully clean when I was done.

Next, a trip up the tower to count marine mammals and gulls. I found a key outside the door as I entered. The fob looked somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. I thought one of the guests might have dropped it yesterday, so left it at the bottom of the stairs. A hundred steps up, I remembered why it looked familiar–it was the key to the hatch to the outside of the light. Down 100 steps and back up 100 steps. A double workout for today!

While at the top, I called my friends at Rocky Point Bird Observatory just the other side of Bentinck Island and arranged a neighbourly wave. There is a gap in Bentinck that provides a great view of Race Rocks from the other side.

Census complete, I headed back to ground level. Hmmm..Where are my glasses? You got it–back up at the light! Another trip to the top!  Although I had done a count of gulls from the top, I decided to count the young birds again. They are difficult to see from the light. At ground level, I found about three times as many as I had counted from the birds’ eye view.

The sea lions had dumped most of the posts and their concrete blocks off the jetty again. I managed to get them back up before the tide rolled in and repaired the fence–again. I have to say, I felt that I’d put in a full-day’s labour before noon!

Weekly Census
Observed today because of arrival too late on Friday for a fair census

Mammals:

  • Steller sea lion: 327 (including entangled female detected yesterday)
  • California sea lion: 142
  • Harbour seal: 64

Birds:

  • Canada Goose: 7
  • Black Oystercatcher: 5
  • Pigeon Guillemot: 34
  • Ruddy Turnstone: 1
  • Black Turnstone: 15
  • Brandt’s Cormorant 2
  • Pelagic Cormorant 30
  • Western Gull 2
  • California Gull 270
  • Glaucous-winged Gull 1042 (including about 300 young)
  • Brown Pelican

Facility work:

  • Clean the solar panels
  • Cleaned windows on the north and west side of Science Building
  • Returned posts and concrete blocks to the jetty and repaired the fence
  • Topped up batteries

Weather:

  • Sky: sunny and clear all day
  • Wind: variable 0 – 18 knots
  • Sea: rippled
  • Air temperature: low 15 °C, high 26 °C
  • Seawater temperature at max flood: 11.6 °C

Photos from today:

Entangled Sea Lion still being seen near the jetty.

Mom and pup Harbour Seal exuding cuteness

Jetty stripped almost clean of all the fencing posts

Young Glaucous-winged Gull in the early morning sunlight

One of several private vessels seen near the rocks today.

Looks familiar!