Tag Archives: dfo

Sea Lion Disentanglement Story

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I said there would be more disentanglement photos and information to come, and today is that day.

The following post contains photos of a severely entangled and wounded sea lion so this is your warning to skip this post if you don’t want to see it…but I hope you stay because it has a happy ending.

On Sunday, Oct 20th I spotted a California sea lion with one of the worst entanglements I’ve ever seen. With tears running down my face as I photographed it, I immediately reported it to Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue Society (VAMMR).

As I’ve mentioned before, sea lion disentanglements are tricky. You need the weather and tide to be calm, you need all teams to be available on the same day, and you need the entangled animal to stay put until that happens. Sometimes it takes weeks or even longer for this to happen.

This particular animal didn’t have weeks to wait. The monofilament gillnet was wound so tightly around his rostrum (muzzle) that he couldn’t eat. It was wrapped inside and around his mouth and embedded deeply in his neck. His poor body condition showed that he had been suffering from this entanglement for quite some time.

Within 48 hours of my initial sighting, a plan was in place. A team from VAMMR came out with two teams from DFO, as well as myself and Greg to help this sea lion. The weather was sunny and the ocean was glassy. Perfect conditions and in record timing. Best of all, our entangled lion was still on his rock.

Disentanglements can often be quick – a snip of a packing strap or fishing line, pull it off, tag it, and off they swim – but not this one. The rescue took 75 minutes from sedation to release. Once he was darted with a sedative he entered the water, requiring the teams to remove the entanglement from the boat – making it even harder. The netting was so tight that typical tools couldn’t be used and surgical scissors were required to cut it off.

I’ve worked in the marine mammal rescue field for over 6 years and this response truly left me at a loss for words. It was devastating, harrowing, and relieving all in one. Watching that sea lion swim off and haul out on a nearby rock was incredible and left everyone involved feeling like they were on cloud nine.

Since rescue, I’ve seen the sea lion almost every day on the south side of the main island and I’ve been able to watch him as he recovers. Each day he has been brighter and moved a little more, and yesterday was the first day in a week that I have not seen him. My hope is that he’s gone off to hunt now that he’s feeling better.

I only have a few days left out here so I am crossing my fingers I get to see him one more time.

I am overjoyed with how this response came together and played out. The collaboration between VAMMR, DFO, Pearson College, and BC parks was unmatched and it was such a massive undertaking for this rescue to happen so quickly and it was truly life saving.

As for today…lots of outside tasks done today (none of which beats a disentanglement so I won’t bore you).

Facility Work:

  • Fence repair
  • Propane transfer/change out
  • Algae removal on student house
  • Washed windows

Weather:

  • Sky: Blue sky and sunny
  • Wind: Low of 1 knot, high of 6 knots
  • Sea: Calm
  • Temperature: Low 7•C, High  11•C

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

Seawater Data June 2022

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DAILY SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE AND SALINITY OBSERVATIONS
Station RACE ROCKS.                     June 2022
Observer Derek/Jillian
Day Time Temp ºC Salinity ppt
1 3:45 9.2 32.2
2 4:15 9.2 32.3
3 5:00 9.3 32.2
4 5:30 9.3 32.1
5 6:35 9.4 32.2
6 7:30 9.4 32.0
7 9:00 9.3 32.1
8 10:00 9.4 32.2
9 10:30 9.6 31.9
10 11:20 9.7 31.7
11 12:00 9.7 31.7
12 12:45 9.2 32.2
13 1:30 9.7 32.4
14 2:25 9.5 32.2
15 3:00 9.6 32.1
16 5:35 9.5 32.2
17 4:45 9.3 32.5
18 5:40 9.3 32.5
19 6:35 9.7 32.1
20 7:35 9.9 32.1
21 8:00 10.1 31.7
22 8:45 10.1 31.7
23 9:10 10.2 31.5
24 11:05 10.1 31.7
25 11:55 10.1 31.8
26 12:38 10.4 31.5
27 1:20 10.6 31.3
28 1:40 10.1 31.5
29 2:50 10.4 31.0
30 2:40 10.4 31.3

Many Visitors at Race Rocks

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Ecological Notes:

Race Rocks is a wealth of biodiversity, and an amazing place to get to spend any amount of time. Despite the huge amount of wildlife that spend time on Race Rocks over the winter, it can feel a little quiet. Not last week!

We were super lucky getting some of the Pearson College students out despite COVID lockdowns on Campus, this is always one of the highlights of our time at Race Rocks! The kids always have the best questions and remind me why I pursued the life I live now. Any opportunity to share the joy and smells of Race Rocks.

Pearson Students getting Elephant Seal 101. Photo by Laura Verhegge

After the final group of students left, we got a surprise visit from DFO via their helicopter coming by for a socially-distanced visit. We had a helicopter buzzing us throughout the week, and it wasn’t until it landed at the end of the week we realized that was most likely the crew checking out the island, seals, and heli-pad. The elephant seals clearly weren’t fans of the helicopter. Interesting-ly the idling helicopter covers the same sound frequencies the Beachmaster uses to drum his dominance. Our Beachmaster tried drumming at the intruder, but he couldn’t overpower the sound and decided that abandoning his harem and a trip into the ocean was preferable to hanging out with a helicopter.

The next day we woke up to a new female Elephant Seal! We suspect this seal was Tyra from last year, going off her scar patterns and BEAUTIFUL eyes. At this point in the season we have expectations for these seals: they come ashore, hang out for 5 days, give birth, nurse for 21 days, mate and leave. Tyra was a reminder that we don’t really know that much about these mysterious animals. She came ashore, mated, and left. She looked great, very plump. I am really quite surprised. Maybe not all pregnancies come to term, and in that light her behaviour actually makes a lot of sense. She needs to come ashore when a Beachmaster is ready to mate, and if she doesn’t have a pup to birth then there really isn’t a reason to stick around and wait until it’s time to moult.

Tyra returning to Race Rocks to visit the Beachmaster. All hail the Beachmaster!

And we had a new pup born! I told you lots happened. Rhi-Rhi has been ashore since January 25th and slipped out a new pup this morning. The new pup is super chirpy, and very mobile; it had a very ‘rolled up’ vibe directly after being born, with curled fingernails and it’s giant flippers wrapped around itself. We expect her to nurse until the 22nd of February, but clearly I need to stop trying to predict what these animals are going to do.

Rhi-Rhi inspecting her newborn pup.

Facility Work:

Race Rocks has a Boston Whaler from it’s Coast Guard era that can be used in case of an emergency. During a very low tide we figured this was the ideal time to re-spool the twisted up cable used to launch the boat. While it’s easy to think that emergencies never happen, it’s great to know that in that hypothetical situation the boat will be able to be launched on any tide without any problems. Big thanks to the previous Eco-Guardians who did some great boat maintenance!

DND events:

Lots of blasting over the last week, some of the Pearson College students were definitely surprised.

Elephant Seals seem happiest when all smushed up against each other.

Feature Event:

We had someone report a wayward Elephant Seals wandering around Sturdees Beach & the Gorge vale Golf Club. This fits very well with the theme of ‘we don’t really know much about Elephant Seals’ and thought it would be worth mentioning. As the Northern Elephant Seal population continues to recover, hopefully we’ll all get to experience more Elephant Seals in British Colombia, and sometimes that might be a returning pup who hasn’t really figured out the timing of things yet. They’re really remarkable animals, who spend a very small proportion of their time (<10%) above the water Over the last 2 years there have been wayward pups reported crawling around in areas where they were not wanted, these little seals are just looking for some place safe to moult and head back into the ocean. This is one of the parts that makes Race Rocks such an important place for these animals: a place on land where the seals can hang out and sleep without being disturbed: their time on land relies on them fasting for weeks on end losing up to 40% of their body weight during these stints. Every time they get woken up or stressed that is another drain on their limited energy available, leading to the first couple of years where mortality can be up to 75%.

A wayward elephant seal pup at Christie Point, photos by Dorothy Chambers

The silver colouration shows this wayward pup has already moulted, so probably from last years birthing season. While we would expect pups to return to Race Rocks to moult, we don’t really know how they return to the same areas, and they may just try out new areas at different times; or just get lost.

https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/seal-hits-the-links-at-gorge-vale-likely-same-one-that-has-toured-view-royal-5009767

Weather Events:

It was a lovely week of weather, punctuated with a nice little blast of wind of 40 knots+ Sunday and Monday.

The first pup Mikey is already starting to moult his soft baby fuzz into a silvery sleek diving suit of fur at 41 days old.

Weather – Current:

http://www.victoriaweather.ca/current.php?id=72

Weather – Past:

http://www.victoriaweather.ca/station.php

A Busy Week: Entanglements, Fall Weather

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Weather:

  • Sky overcast
  • Visibility 1-10 NM – intermittent fog with a consistent layer of wildfire smoke
  • Wind 5-15 knots W
  • Calm water, rippled surface

Visitors/Traffic: 

  • One contractor visited the island yesterday, along with Greg and Lawrence the day previous.
  • Minimal tourism and pleasure craft activity (5-10 boats coming through daily)
  • Today Marine Mammal Rescue and DFO visited the reserve by water to look for entangled sea lions that had been reported to DFO. Unfortunately we were not able to spot the animals reported. Despite multiple vessels, the view from the lighthouse, and even a drone!

Ecological Observations: 

  • The increase in sea lions seems to be slowing and tapering off. Wherever there is available space, they haul out and fight for the best place to rest.
  • The elephant seal ‘Erica’ GE103 is still sticking around, and spends most of her time resting near the base of the jetty.
  • We noticed a robin hopping around on the grass yesterday but unfortunately didn’t get a picture.
  • We did see one sea lion with an entanglement injury on Sunday evening. It was the same one reported to DFO by a visitor in the reserve (boating past). We were not able to spot him again, and today we found the flasher which had been hanging from his mouth on the ground.

Successful Sea Lion Rescue!

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Weather:

  • Sky Clear and blue
  • Visibility 15+ NM
  • Wind 20-25 knots NE
  • Sea state: swells up to one meter
  • Temperature outside: 19.8 C
  • Pressure: 1021 hPa (decreasing)
  • We have been seeing consistent fog in the late evening, lasting for an average of 2 hrs. The fog banks seem to move over us from Port Angeles.

Visitors: 

  • Marine Mammal Rescue and DFO visited yesterday (more on this below).
  • Steady flow of pleasure crafts and whale watching vessels over the long weekend.

Sea Lion Disentanglement: 

  • Yesterday Marine Mammal Rescue along with the support of DFO vessels and staff came to help a sea lion with a plastic packing band stuck around his neck. They were able to successfully dart the sea lion with a tranquilizer injection, remove the band, give him tracking tags on his front flippers, and take a blood sample. When this was done they injected a reversal drug to wake him up and with a little scratch he was back on his way!

Ecological Notes:

  • The seagull chicks have officially flown the coop! Only a few remain and we are able to move around the island again without bothering the nesting birds.
  • This year we have noticed significantly less trash left behind by seagulls than last year. Our best guess is that they had more food available to them this summer, which would also align with observing them regurgitating much more fish that the previous season.
  • The sea lions have been increasing in numbers every day. The new fencing material that Nick and Greg used seems to be working much better than the wire that we tried last year, preventing them from damaging the island infrastructure. We have been letting them rest on the jetty this week but we will soon need to install more fencing in preparation for student visits.
  • Yesterday we found two turnstones which appeared to have been killed by the gulls while we were investigating the area near the codar antenna (SW Great Race Rock).

August Daily Seawater Surface Temperature and Salinity Observations

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Day  Time Temp ºC Salinity ppt
1 13:30 11.1 30.8
2 14:15 10.7 31.3
3 14:30 10.5 30.5
4 15:00 10.1 31.8
5 15:40 10.4 31.8
6 16:50 11.6 31.1
7 17:00 11.2 31.3
8 17:55 11.1 31.5
9 18:30 11.5 31.3
10 18:45 11.7 30.9
11 20:00 11.6 31.4
12 8:30 11.8 31.1
13 9:45 12.2 29.6
14 10:15 12.5 29.2
15 12:00 12.5 29.6
16 11:35 12.5 29.5
17 12:14 11.3 30.6
18 12:53 10.8 31.2
19 13:37 10.9 31.3
20 14:29 10.6 31.6
21 15:34 10.3 31.8
22 16:14 10.6 31.8
23 17:02 10.5 31.9
24 18:34 11.1 31.6
25 6:56 10.2 31.8
26 7:41 9.9 32.0
27 9:20 10.8 31.4
28 10:42 10.6 31.7
29 11:40 10.9 31.2
30 12:30 10.9 31.3
31 13:04 11.0 31.3

Neat Intertidal Finds

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Weather:

  • Visibility 6 NM
  • Sky overcast
  • Wind 5-10 knots W
  • Sea state: Calm

Marine Traffic/Island Visitors:

  • Greg visited with supplies on Friday
  • There have been a steady trickle of eco-tourism boats, 5-10 per day.
  • On Thursday DFO and Marine Mammal rescue visited the reserve (more on this below).

Ecological Observations: 

  • There has been a young sea lion in the reserve that appeared to be very underweight and weak. It was first spotted in the reserve on July 1st, and a few more times following. Marine mammal rescue notified us of the sightings earlier this week, and we were able to find the animal where it had originally been reported by a local eco-tourism company. With the assistance of DFO, they were able to make the journey from Vancouver to RR on Thursday July 9th, but unfortunately they weren’t able to spot the sea lion, and we have not seen it in the reserve since July 8th.
  • The seagull hatching is in full swing! There are now many chicks in various stages of development.
  • The goslings and their parents left for their first swim on the ocean yesterday at slack tide, but we haven’t seen them return. We wonder if they got caught in the stronger currents or perhaps made the journey to shore.
  • There are a few more sea lions in the reserve this week, roughly ten stellar sea lions on middle rocks.
  • We have had some low tides this week in the middle of the day, making for a great opportunity to explore the intertidal- photos below!

We Have a Weaner

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Wind: yesterday and today 5-25 knots between E and N
Sea State: yesterday and today rippled with afternoon NE swells of up to 1 m
Visibility: yesterday 10-15 NM, today 3-10 NM
Sky: both days mostly cloudy with periods of rain
Temperature: both days 7-10 °C
Atmospheric CO2: 414.07 ppm (recorded by NOAA at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii)

On Tuesday night, the first elephant seal mother left the island, leaving her 24 day old pup to fend for itself. The mother had the tail flipper tag T562. The pup is still hanging out with the harem on the lawn.

The island is running on reduced power due to an issue with the generator, which is in the process of being fixed.

Four eco tour boats were in the reserve over the past two days. There were no human visitors on the island.

See the photos below for a few sights from the past two days:

Sea Lion Rescued from Plastic Entanglement

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A team comprised of the DFO and Vancouver Aquariums Marine Mammal Rescue (MMR) came out to Race Rocks on September 16th to help the entangled sea lions we’ve spotted over the last few weeks. Leaving from Pedder Bay at 0900, they arrived in two RHIBs at the reserve shortly after. After observing the struggling animals over the last while and communicating information with MMR, they were a welcomed sight.

Right away we spotted three possibly entangled sea lions from the lighthouse (unfortunately none of these three being the animals we photographed previously). We then landed the team of vet techs and veterinarian Marty at the jetty to assess the situation. It was decided that one of the sea lions resting by the water between the guest house and the helicopter pad was our best rescue candidate.

Marty and a videographer from Vancouver Aquarium approached over the helicopter pad from the direction of ‘Camera 5’. They got into position and a shot was taken, but the tranquilizer dart bounced and the sea lion fled into the water.

From the lighthouse we were able to follow its movements and keep the team apprised by radio. There was uncertainty about whether or not it received a partial dose of the tranquilizer as it floated in strange positions/patterns. Moving around Race Rocks to the water beside the solar panel/generator building, it hauled out again and another shot at it was lined up from one of the boats. The angle wasn’t quite right, and it again fled into the ocean and couldn’t be spotted. It was around 1400, and everyone took a break to have some food.

After this, everyone considered calling it off as it was getting late and we couldn’t locate the animal. At the last moment, with both boats ready to head back to Pedder Bay, it was spotted from the lighthouse (resting on the rock mound on the NW point of Great Race Rock)! Tranquilizing was attempted from water, but the dart bounced again and landed in the water and was recovered. Here’s a short video of that:


After that, it ended up too far from the water to try another shot by boat, so in a final effort the one boat landed Marty and the team again while the other stayed on the water to support. With no cover available between him and the animal, Marty had no choice but to crawl about one hundred feet in order to take the shot.

We were able to capture the following footage of the sea lion being darted, going into the water, and then after a tense 20 minutes during which a pod of transient orcas appeared in the reserve (who sometimes eat sea lions), it was found! The team proceeded to cradle the animal between their vessels and remove the plastic band. Then, they injected a reversal drug to reverse the tranquilizer before letting it go.

Everyone was relieved to have successfully helped an animal in need. We have suggested that future disentanglement efforts might have a better chance if extended to overnight stays in the guest house, and perhaps coordinated and executed in a more timely manner in relation to the animal sighting(s). This time we were unable to find the original animals that we had previously spotted, since it took quite a while to organize the rescue attempt. A big thank you to everyone who came to help this sea lion and teach us about their work!

Check out rescue.ocean.org to learn more about the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue program, and Ocean Wise.

Thanks to the rescue team, one more sea lion has a better chance of survival! (vet Marty holding the dart gun and dart used to tranquilize the sea lion)

 

See media coverage: https://www.bclocalnews.com/news/plastic-band-removed-from-neck-of-greater-victoria-sea-lion-2/

Birds and Rescue Efforts

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-15 NE
  • Sky: Partly Cloudy
  • Water: Some swells this morning, now its more choppy but under a metre

Boats/Visitors

  • A team from DFO and the aquarium came out yesterday to try help out a couple of the neckbanded sea lions, the sea lions were uncooperative and left before the team got here, so hopefully next week the sea lions will be where we want them to be there is one here with fishing line around his head and it looks awful, i hope we can help him soon
  • An advisee group is here for the night with their advisor Clint
  • also the electrician came today, hopefully get that automatic start on the generator soon

Maintenance

  • Ran the desalinator a bit but its still not operating very well, makes less water in a longer amount of time
  • would like to do more pressure washing but need to be able to replace the water being used

Ecological

  • Sea lions are still slowly making their way out
  • There were quite a few oyster catchers around today
  • Ravens and eagles around as well
  • Also a single snow bunting has been hanging around