Tag Archives: juvenile elephant seal

Clear Skies + Elephant Seals! (census)

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Weather:

  • Visibility 15+ NM
  • Sky mostly clear, overcast in late afternoon
  • Wind 0-10 knots N
  • Sea state: calm, glassy!

Visitors: A small number of pleasure crafts trickling through. Only a handful of tourism vessels over the weekend and a few through the late week.

Ecological Notes: 

  • This week has brought some of our favorite visitors to Race Rocks: elephant seals! We’ve been joined by two huge male elephants seals as well as two younger pups that look to be only a year or so old. Unfortunately we haven’t seen any tagged elephant seals yet so that’s all we know for now.
  • We’ve still been spotted seagulls displaying odd behavior. We’ve noticed a total of 7 over the past month.
  • Whale sightings have slowed down now, seemingly as the weather gets colder and salmon runs slow. We have still been seeing around one per day but the sightings are less consistent.
  • Today we noticed a tiny sea lion pup nursing! We mostly only see male sea lions on race rocks, but recently we’ve been noticing very small sea lions arriving. It’s hard to tell the sex of sea lions from a distance so this was the first female we’ve identified in the crowd.
  • The bald eagles have continued to visit to fish and hunt gulls in the early to late morning. They particularly like to sit under the tower containing camera 5, sometimes up to 10 at once! The color variation throughout their different life stages is particularly striking.

Census:

  • 54 Harbour seals
  • 177 Stellar sea lions
  • 233 California sea lions
  • 4 Elephant seals
  • 275 Brandt’s + pelagic cormorants (too far away to distinguish)
  • 6 Double-crested cormorants
  • 5 Surfbirds
  • 3 Dunlins
  • 25 Black turnstones
  • 12 Harlequin ducks
  • 7 Bald eagles
  • 290 Thayer’s gulls

August 21

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Wind: every direction throughout the day 0-24 knots
Sea State: calm in morning, rippled in afternoon
Visibility: 0-10 NM
Sky: fog and patches of rain in morning to mid afternoon, partly cloudy in afternoon to evening
Temperature: 12-18 °C
Atmospheric CO2: 412.15 ppm (recorded by NOAA at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii)

The juvenile female elephant seal tagged V173 slid her way up the boat ramp this morning. She is looking healthy and well fed. She has visited several times over the past few weeks, as well as in the spring to moult and briefly in December. She was born last year on Drakes Beach, in Point Reyes National Seashore, in California. Researchers tagged her as a weaned pup on February 28, 2019.

I did some maintenance around the island: changed the oil in the backup generator, tidied paths with the trimmer to make it easier to move fuel and equipment with carts, cleaned the solar panels, washed windows on the main house, and pressure washed the stairs leading up to the door of the lighthouse to get rid of the slippery bird poop. Greg brought 800 litres of fresh water, which we pumped up from the jetty to the fresh water tank.

Here are two photos from today:

Census Friday

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Wind: yesterday mostly from W 4-22 knots, today N-NE 2-9 knots
Sea State: yesterday calm in morning 0.5m chop in afternoon, today calm
Visibility: both days 5-15 NM
Sky: yesterday overcast with patches of rain and sun, today partly cloudy
Temperature: both days 6-8 °C
Atmospheric CO2: 415.43 ppm (recorded by NOAA at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii)

Census results from today:
6 elephant seals (2 female pups, 1 female juvenile, 3 female adults)
21 steller sea lions
62 california sea lions
1 sea otter
91 harbour seals
3 bald eagles (1 juvenile, 2 adults)
12 Canada geese
6 brandt’s cormorants
4 double-crested cormorants
10 pelagic cormorants
59 thayer’s gulls
12 black oystercatchers
14 harlequin ducks
108 pigeon guillemots
56 surfbirds
26 black turnstones
1 killdeer
1 song sparrow

There were no boats in the ecological reserve over the past two days.

 

March 24 and 25

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Wind: yesterday variable 1-11 knots, today mostly W 2-17 knots
Sea State: both days calm
Visibility: yesterday 5-15 NM, today 10-15 NM
Sky: yesterday overcast, rain then clearing in early afternoon, today partly cloudy then clear from mid morning onwards
Temperature: yesterday 5-6 °C, today 5-10 °C
Atmospheric CO2: 414.34 ppm (recorded by NOAA at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii)

I heard back about more information on the recently arrived female juvenile elephant seal pup, with green tags E103 and E135. Dr Patrick Robinson, the Director of the Año Nuevo Reserve and Lecturer at University of California Santa Cruz, sent a report of the history of the seal’s sightings and said, “It’s always great to get these updates… we greatly appreciate it!” The seal was born in the 2018 winter season, which makes her just over two years old. She was seen a lot during the winter and spring of 2018 at Año Nuevo Reserve. Researchers took two blubber samples to study bioaccumulation. The seal wasn’t seen again until the fall of 2019, when she spent a month at Race Rocks between September 7 and October 11. Fast forward a few months, the seal came back to Race Rocks two days ago, on March 23. She appears to be in the early stages of her catastrophic moult of her fur and skin, judging by the patches on her sides.

The youngest elephant seal pup returned yesterday morning from her one day adventure in the sea. She spent the whole day sleeping by the wood pile. The oldest pup has been gone for the past two days. A new adult female elephant seal arrived yesterday. She is most likely one of the four mothers that was here in January and February. So far the three have come back a month and a half after they each weaned their pups, which happened on January 21, February 4 and February 9.

At today’s 16:31 high tide, after recording the salinity and temperature of the water, I hooked up the hoses and pump to top up the seawater in the cistern. The gas powered water pump sucks water through a hose with a strainer dropped off the end of the jetty. The water is pumped through 76 m (250′) of fire hose up to the cistern. Over a couple hours, tens of thousands of litres of water were pumped into the underground cistern, which should feed the desalinator for the next month and a bit.

Yesterday, there was one pleasure boat that zoomed through Middle Channel and stopped by the rocks to take photos of sea lions. This afternoon, the Canadian Coast Guard lifeboat Cape Calvert, appeared to be out for a cruise around Race Rocks from the base in Victoria. They came in for a closer look and a couple of the crew appeared to be snapping photos of Race Rocks with their phones. This is a very photogenic place. This afternoon, Guy, Corey and Christine from Pearson College delivered a new fridge and took away the old one that recently stopped working. They also brought some fresh food from the Pearson kitchen, which is closing down for a while.

Here are a few photos from the past two days: