Wind: Light breezes throughout the day with strong gusts up to 40 knots overnight
Sky: Cloudy with sunny break
Water: a bit choppy, one foot swells in the morning
Boats/Visitors
Boat traffic was pretty minimum today, whale watching boat cruised by
No visitors today
Ecological
Not much has changed in terms of wildlife on the island in the last few days. Consistent number of gulls, sea lions, eagles, black turnstones, canada geese and cormorants with one or large two male elephant seals.
Haven’t seen any whales of any kind yet unfortunately.
Other
DND blasting has taken a break for the past week which has been nice.
Visibility: 15 miles for most of the day with the Washington coast as clear as I’ve seen it so far, until early evening when fog came in from the east covering downtown Victoria from view.
Wind: Little to no breeze during the day with it picking up to 14-18 knots by 7pm.
Sky: Mostly cloudy with some sun
Water: calm throughout the day, a bit choppy at times
Boats/Visitors
Boat traffic was fairly minimum today with the usual commercial vessels in the distance and one or two whale watching boats.
No visitors today
Ecological
There seems to be more stellar sea lion pups on the island, especially on the south rocks in the last few days, though I may just have not noticed them among the “piles” of bodies as they tend to lay all over each other.
Still lots of Black Turnstones, Cormorants, Eagles, Canada Geese and Gulls around
Only saw one of the male elephant seals around today
Other
Chopped some bigger logs into kindling for the woodstove this afternoon and cleaned up a lot of rocks of varying sizes that have been falling from the paths and bank walls between the lighthouse and science house.
Pretty chilly today, had frost on the ground and frozen puddles for the first time.
Water: a bit choppy during the day with the winds but mostly calm
Boats/Visitors
Had a group of 10 visitors doing a team building exercise on the island for most of the day.
Didn’t see a lot of boat activity, one Rockfish diving boat was around for a bit.
Ecological
The two large male Elephant Seals are still on the island. They’ve moved closer to each other but I haven’t seen any interaction between the two of them.
There is a very young elephant seal pup by the jetty. Our guess of it’s age is around 8-10 months.
Other
It was really nice socializing with people after 17 days of little to no face-to-face human interaction aside from the occasional food and fuel drop-offs.
Wind: Light breezes throughout the day then very high, Gale force winds came in around 9 or 10 pm of up to 39 knots for an hour or two then died down to a steady 20-25 knots with rain.
Sky: cloudy with some sun
Water: mostly calm, a bit choppy during the day then very rough throughout the night.
Boats/Visitors
Saw 6 or 7 sail boats out together and 1 diving boat
No visitors today
Ecological
Had a group of 12-14 Black Turnstones munching grass together in front of the house.
Our resident elephant seal Bernard has been joined by another large male elephant seal. They seem to be keeping their distance from each other for now.
Other
The view of the Olympic Mountains has been beautiful and clear these last few days. A nice change from the cloak of fog and clouds that often cover them from sight.
Visibility: low visibility this morning but cleared up by noon
Wind: very calm until early afternoon then picked up to high 20s
Sky: cloudy with a bit of sun
Water: calm and flat until the wind picked up then it got rough
Boats/Visitors
had one whale watching boat cruise by the island
Kyle came by with fuel and food. Thanks Kyle!
Ecological
The large brown raptor I saw yesterday was more likely a young 2-3 year old bald eagle. Saw three of them today playing in the wind and picking at something on the ground.
