Tag Archives: killerwhale

Water pumps and whales

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Weather

  • Visibility: 0-15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-15 NE
  • Sky: Dense fog to partly cloudy
  • Water: Calm to choppy, under a metre

Boats/Visitors

  • A few ecotours and fishing boats going by
  • Greg dropped by to help us sort out our water situation

Maintenance

  • Fence maintenance with the help of the students
  • The electric water pump in the crane shed is working to an extent, the issue is the hose doesn’t go out far enough, so I can’t pump water at low tide
  • The fire pump also needs some maintenance

Ecological

  • The students have been doing a daily census
  • Today they have spotted about 7 or 8 humpbacks and a pod of about 6 killer whales

A lot of Whales

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 5-20 NW
  • Sky: Partly Cloudy
  • Water: Waves under a metre

Boats/Visitors

  • Plenty of ecotours around today
  • Guy also came by, we moved more of the old batteries out today

Maintenance

  • Ran the desalinator and the generator when the clouds came in, late afternoon
  • moved out some of the old batteries

Ecological

  • saw a small pod of killer whales around north rock, about 7 of them late morning, early afternoon
  • saw another pod around sunset, south of the island but not too far out
  • also saw humpbacks, one or two near both pods
  • there have been killdeer hanging around and the geese came back today

Census, rain and whales

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Weather

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

Boats/Visitors

  • Quite a bit of boat traffic, most of it being whale watching tours
  • Guy came by with a couple more boat loads of students to give them a tour around the island

Maintenance

  •  Didn’t have to do any pressure washing today thanks to the rain although I did have to run the generator a bit to make up for not getting any solar energy today

Ecological

  • An elephant seal showed up yesterday and she is still around today, so thats exciting
  • also there have been a few humpback whale sightings and Guy said he saw some killer whales on the way over here but I missed them unfortunately
  • plenty of sea lions, seems like there is more everyday
  • not as many gulls as last week and I haven’t seen any cormorants on the outer rocks today

Census

  • stellar sea lions – 132
  • california sea lions – 314
  • harbour seals – 94
  • gulls – 261
  • elephant seals – 1 female
  • black turnstones – 12
  • fox sparrows – 2

New Students

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Weather

  • Visibility: 15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-10 NW
  • Sky: Clear
  • Water: Flat Calm

Boats/Visitors

  • Quite a bit of boat traffic, many ecotours, fishing boats and sailboats
  • Guy brought by a couple boat loads of the new first year students, as he did yesterday so we could give them a little tour of Race Rocks, its great when the students get to come out here and see another aspect of Pearson College, they don’t come out here that often and you can’t see it from the college

Maintenance

  • having some camera issues lately, will need to order a new SD card for the Race Rocks camera and the one in personal camera is not cooperating either, but hopefully we will be able to get more photos up soon

Ecological

  • still around 300 sea lion, mostly californias around the island.
  • plenty of harbour seals on the outer rocks, a few on the main island
  • also a few whale sightings, I saw two humpbacks by north rock yesterday morning and Guy said he also saw killer whales near there when he came he around 9:30am yesterday.
  • Also one of the younger seagulls I posted a photo of last week is dead, not quite sure what happened, just its body by the pathway
  • there are still about 4 of the younger ones all together

Its been an eventful week and hopefully I can start taking pictures again soon :)

High tides and big waves

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Weather

  • Visibility:15 Miles
  • Wind: 10-15 SE
  • Sky: Overcast
  • Water: Choppy 1-2 metres

Boats/Visitors

  • I have not seen any boats today

Ecological

  • The 8 day old pup is doing very well so is the mother and the big guy beside them

Notes

  • very large waves today and the tide seemed higher than usual
  • the wind speed has been going up down, from nothing to 15
  • also saw a very small pod of killer whales, maybe 3 or 4 of them