Tag Archives: elephant seal

Jumping Into the Deep End

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Weather 

Visibility: 5-10 miles

Wind: Less than one knot

Sky: Overcast with lots of fog

Water: Calm

 

Boats/Visitors: 

This morning students from the college took a dive into the deep end and swam from our jetty back to Pearson’s dock. Along with the swimmers, early this morning we greeted their coach, a team of Pearson staff supporting them in multiple vessels, as well as a team of kayakers to accompany them and a military college vessel.

We have observed very few whale watching boats over the past few days. It has been very foggy.

Over the past few days we have had groups of students visit with their families and a couple of outside groups as well.

Swimmers, safety boat, and accompanying kayakers.

Quite a few kayakers started their journey to rack rocks at 05:30 this morning, just in time to be greeted by the sea lions waking up.

 

Ecological: 

The two families of geese are still on Race Rocks, with the older gaggle starting to learn how to swim! The nest outside our door appears to have been abandoned after the seagulls cracked the eggs last week.

The elephant seals are starting to leave, only 4 were counted these past couple of days, two moulting. The larger elephant seal with one cloudy eye is gone.

Fewer sea lions lately, but with a lot of visitors it seems that most of them moved to the SE side of the island, away from the busy jetty. As well, there has been some very loud DND blasting.

We spotted an oyster catcher nest on the NE side of the main residence. Currently there are two eggs but one appears to be cracked.

Oyster catcher nest nestled in the rocks.

 

Still haven’t seen any seagull eggs, although they continue to seem less and less afraid of us as they build their nests.

Census Report:

115 seagulls

9 sea lions

7 geese, 12 goslings

2 seals

4 oyster catchers

Barn Swallows

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 5-15 SW
  • Sky: Overcast
  • Water: Flat

Boats/Visitors

  • had a little tour from the college come by this morning
  • the day before there were a couple of people from UVIC setting up equipment to monitor earthquake activity

Maintenance

  • The blue water tank at the side of the house is being cleaned out and filled at the college and will be transported here to fill up our freshwater tank until we get a new desalinator put in place

Ecological

  • Maybe 15 stellers and 30 Californias around, the numbers have gone down
  • two adorable little barn swallows have been hanging around the house
  • 11 elephants, the numbers will be dropping soon as everyone has finished molting and will need to go hunting soon
  • a couple of hundred pigeon guillemots around today
  • about 8 oystercatchers who should be setting up their nests soon
  • still around 16 geese and at least 14 goslings, three nests hatched
  • a few hundred seagulls buildings their nests
  • the cormorants and harbour seals are sticking to the outer rocks
  • two bald eagles out on north rock today

Other

  • was stuck in a fog bank yesterday and it has been very cloudy today so I will run the generator a bit
  • I leave on Tuesday and our new eco-guardians Mara and Kai will be taking over for the summer

Barn Swallows on the deck railing

Goslings

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-15 NW
  • Sky: Clear
  • Water: Flat

Boats/Visitors

  • Summer has really set in and there will be all kinds of boats going by for the next few months

Maintenance

  • Just attempting to clean out our water tank on the side of the house so we can get some fresh water brought to race rocks, top up our fresh water tank

Ecological

  • Still not a lot of sea lions around
  • there is still 12 elephant seals, a couple of them are scattered around but most of them are basking in the sun on the platform
  • there is a total of 14 goslings, the last nest only had two of them hatch which was interesting because I hadn’t addled that nest
  • the seagulls are in the process of building their nests and the oyster catchers look like they might be nesting soon too

Beautiful weather

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-15 NW
  • Sky: Clear
  • Water: Flat

Boats/Visitors

  • A lot of tour boats the past few days

Maintenance

  • With the amount of seagulls lately the solar panels need to get scrubbed more often

Ecological

  • Not a lot of sea lions lately, but still around 12 elephant seals, since the pup left
  • I think all of the goslings that escaped addling have hatched and I’m sure that is the last of goose nesting season
  • the seagulls are starting to build their nests but have not gotten really aggressive yet

More goslings

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 5-15 NW
  • Sky: Clear
  • Water: Flat

Boats/Visitors

  • A lot of tour boats around today in this beautiful weather, although not much traffic on those last couple windy days we had

Maintenance

  • A couple new goose nests popped up so those have been taken care of although there are about 3 nests that were too far along to addle and two of nests have hatched, the third one will hatch any day now and we expect that to be the last of the nests that will hatch this season

Ecological

  • My baby Nemo left this morning, it was definitely past the date we had expected him to leave elephant seals don’t typically stick around past 3 months of age but he had been here for almost 4 months, elephant seal pups also typically leave together when they are born in the same rookery but these two left weeks apart.
  • Still 12 elephant seals around going through the molting process, a couple of them have completed molting
  • the pigeon guillemots are here today
  • I heard there might be two otters out in the north kelp patch now but have not confirmed
  • Also saw a humpback yesterday, first one I’ve seen in a while

Busy weekend

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Was quite busy this weekend but things have calmed down a bit now

Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 5-15 SE
  • Sky: Clear
  • Water: Flat

Boats/Visitors

  • The couple who will be taking the summer shift came by today for a little orientation, ran them through some of the chores we do here and will get more training time when we switch mid May
  • beautiful out the last couple days since the wind calmed down, there has been plenty of boats around

Maintenance

  • The solar panels really need to be scrubbed, I will try get that done tomorrow morning before the sun comes up, they are very difficult to clean when the sun is beating down on them

Ecological

  • 14 elephant seals, the pup is still here
  • very few sea lions, around 100 of them, seems to be an even mix of stellar and californias
  • about 12 geese around and 7 goslings so far
  • a couple hundred pigeon guillemots around today
  • about 6 oystercatchers, they will probably start nesting soon
  • a little group of harlequins around along with about 200 gulls that are starting to build their nests as well
  • there is at least 50 harbour seals on the outer rocks  and that’s about it for a rough census

Marine Science and possible blind sea lion

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 5-15 SE
  • Sky: Partly Cloudy
  • Water: Flat

Boats/Visitors

  • A couple visitors on island observing the elephant seal molt also Laura’s marine science class are doing transect studies in the intertidal zone, yesterday and today

Maintenance

  • Solar has been great lately so I haven’t had to run the generator too much and I have been able to run the desalinator periodically on solar power, still waiting for the new desalinator and once that is up running I would love to pressure wash all of the buildings, they have quite a build up of algae on them.

Ecological

  • A young stellar sea lion was acting strangely on the jetty yesterday, it wasn’t opening its eyes and it was the last one off the jetty, instead of diving off it carefully backed off the jetty tail first, it didn’t appear frail or injured but it was acting very strange which led me to think it was blind, it is branded so I am going to look for it to see if I can get a clear picture of the brand and maybe identify this sea lion and get it help if it needs it.
  • three goose nests were not able to be addled this year, so we will have some goslings running around, but the rest of the nests have been successfully addled
  • still 13 elephant seals, a few young males and mostly older females plus the male pup is still here, he seems to be doing pretty well although he does go swimming I’m not sure if he has started hunting yet

Goslings

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 5-15 NE
  • Sky: Overcast
  • Water: Flat

Boats/Visitors

  • No visitors but quite a few tour boats

Maintenance

  • Just trying to fill up the water tank before guests come to stay in the guest house for a few nights

Ecological

  • The eggs hatched a little sooner than planned, so I missed addling that nest, but the goslings are pretty cute, there are a total of 8 nests this year, as far as I have seen
  • still 13 elephant seals here, the male pup is still around too and most of the elephants have started molting

Rainy day

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-10 NE
  • Sky: Overcast
  • Water: Flat

Boats/Visitors

  • No visitors but quite a few tour boats came to look at the otter in the north kelp bed

Maintenance

  • Its been very cloudy all day so I’ll run the generator and desalinator tonight

Ecological

  • still 13 elephants around, the male pup is still here
  • have to walk around with a broom because the geese can get pretty vicious when walking by
  • plenty of sea lions and harbour seals around and a lot of gulls
  • there has also been quite a bit of eagle activity, they like to chase the seagull’s around

13 Elephants

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-10 NE
  • Sky: Partly Cloudy
  • Water: Choppy, under a metre

Boats/Visitors

  • Had a few visitors this morning, and some help addling goose eggs

Maintenance

  • Haven’t had quite enough sunlight lately so I’ve ran the generator a couple of times but I haven’t had to run it too much

Ecological

  • 13 elephants seals, only one has molted and about 4 of these elephants are young males, between 1-3 years old
  • Nemo the male pup is still here, Dory left a little while ago
  • There are at least 5 or 6 goose nests around that need addling, which we do here as population control of the geese