New Eco-guardian

Ecological Notes:
• 1 female Elephant Seal.
• 1 male Elephant Seal.

Facility Work:
• Power washed stairs of main front house and applied preservative to the wood.
• Cleaned solar panels.

 

Noted Vessel Traffic:
• Several ecotourism vessels and 4 pleasure vessels.

Noted Infractions:
• Two speeding pleasure vessels in the reserve.

Feature Event:
• Bigg’s killer whales entered the reserve yesterday early afternoon and again at sunset!

• Thank you Derek for helping me with the transition as Ecoguardian.

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

Weather – Past:
http://www.victoriaweather.ca/station.php?

Exciting Sightings

Wind: yesterday 0-31 knots from W to E to N, today 10-17 knots from N-NE
Sea State: yesterday rippled, today rippled with chop up to 1 m in morning
Visibility: both days 10-15 NM
Sky: both days clear
Temperature: yesterday 5-7 °C, today 4-6 °C
Atmospheric CO2: 413.85 ppm (recorded by NOAA at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii)

There were some exciting sightings over the past two days. Just before sunset this evening, a pod of orcas was swimming in the current to the west of the island. There were at least five or six orcas of various ages.

This morning, between 20 to 30 pigeon guillemots were paddling through the Middle Channel, to the north of the main island. Some still have grey-ish heads of their winter plumage.

Yesterday one tour boat, two sailboats and three pleasure crafts passed through the ecological reserve. Today three tour boats travelled by the islands. No visitors were on the island.

The military was doing demolition training for the past two days on Bentinck Island.

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

Killer whales!

Weather

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

Boats/Visitors

  • quite a few ecotours out there today

Maintenance

  • firewood has been stacked, now just need to fill the water tank and maybe do some pressure washing

Ecological

  • So nice to see a few killer whales out there today
  • the male pup has started making his way to the water but hasn’t gone in yet, the female pup hasn’t moved from beside the house
  • the alpha is the only male I see on the island at the moment but I think there are two more around
  • the lonely snow bunting is still around

One Orca

Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 2-38 SW
  • Sky: Cloudy
  • Water: Waves were 0-2 metres today

Boats/Visitors

  • There was on ecotour this morning when the wind wasn’t too bad but none this afternoon when the wind picked up

Maintenance

  • Moving the dry wood from the porch stairs to the basement, when the wind calms down again I’ll be moving the wood that Alex cut from the pile to under the stairs to dry out
  • Didn’t have to run the generator during the day but started it after sunset

Ecological

  • I forgot to mention I saw one killer whale swimming west in front of Peddar Bay on Monday
  • Still no second pup, this female has been hauled out for at least six days, starting to think she’s just a bit pudgy, but hopefully, she’ll have a pup soon

Humpbacks

I have not seen any humpbacks in a couple weeks but there was a lot of humpbacks of this year between late September and most of October. I would see usually between 5-10 a day, and sometimes more, it also depends if I am looking up at the same time they are coming up for air. I would say there was even more humpback activity this year than last year. Last year there was also a lot of humpbacks around in October but I also remember there being more killer whales around, I didn’t see as many of those this year. I would see most acitivity around sunrise and sunset, I could count on them everyday to be coming up on the west side of the island and then during the day I wold often see them just south of the island. Once in a while they would get pretty close on the north side of the island but that didn’t happen very often.

 

 

 

Orca Skeletal Mount at Pearson College

The Finished product of the work of skeletal preparation of L51 is now  suspended above the lab benches in Catrin Brown’s Biology Lab. The mount was made by students and Hans Bauer, a former faculty member who volunteered for the job, along with Hugo Sutmoller.

See the flensing of the orca L51 by Pearson College students

 

 

 

A serious contaminant of Orcas in the southern Vancouver island area is PCBs. Male Orcas accumulate these chemicals throughout their life, whereas females are purported to increase in levels until a birth, whereupon the levels in the tissue drop as a result of lactation.

For more information on contaminants in the Orca Food web, see the following Link:

Is Victoria Sewage Contaminating Southern Resident Killer Whales?
A Technical Submission to the SETAC Victoria Sewage Scientific and Technical Review Panel
By Gerald Graham, Ph. D. Marine Environmental Consultant
On behalf of the T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation