Beautiful Spring Day

Weather:

Visitors/Marine Traffic: One pleasure craft within the reserve yesterday

Ecological:

There are now 5 goslings between 2 nests
There are 2 oyster catcher chicks (nest on E side of island). They are too elusive for our camera for now!
The garbage brought to the island by seagulls is increasing now that they are nesting and laying eggs
Yesterday we spotted a patch of broken seagull eggshells near the guest house. Our best guess: the gulls are already looting neighboring nests for food

Wind, Fog, and Eggs!

Weather:

Visibility varied today. This evening visibility is excellent, 10-13 miles. This afternoon we were surrounded by fog and could not see even nearby north rock (less than 1 mile).
Wind this evening is blowing 30-40 knots. This morning was calmer, 12 knots.
Sky clear. This was interrupted mid afternoon by thick fog.
Water white capping and breaking into spindrift.

Boats/Visitors:

Today was fairly quiet, with only a few whale watching boats in the morning which seemed to mostly keep a good distance. Greg visited this afternoon to deliver water as we are still waiting for the new desalinator. A former student visited as well.
The swiftsure international sailing race passed Race Rocks on Saturday, so we have been seeing the boats trickle back towards Victoria over the past couple of days.
Yesterday we spotted a rental boat from Pedder Bay Marina attempt to pass through the channel between our main island and the south islands.
Lately whale watching boats have been present viewing the elephant seals and sea lions. Many have appeared to be well within the 100m distance from sea lions required by DFO.

Ecological:

Two evenings past we noticed the first seagull eggs of the season. We noticed that one nest was missing its egg the next morning. The seagulls have become quite aggressive towards us but only if we get too close to their nest by accident.
There are still four elephant seals on the island, two moulting, the juvenile male from this past spring, and an older female.
The sea lions have remained on the SE side of the island, although fewer than what we were seeing before surrounding our jetty. They have been enjoying surfing the waves periodically.
Another oyster catcher nest spotted on the SW side.
We have been finding dead seagulls presumably killed by the bald eagles that have been hanging around. They especially like to sit on top of camera three.

Seagull guarding its egg and nest.

Other:

Except for in the occasional presence of fog, we have been able to operate the island completely with solar on clear days.
We were in need of batteries so missed a few days of salinity/temperature data collection.

Weather

Boats/Visitors

The calm weather attracted several ecotour boats as well as many private boats
I witnessed several boating violations:
- 2 marina boats were getting really close to the sea lions. I had to call the marina and report the boats.
- A private small boat tried to enter the ramp area near the jetty. I went up to the jetty and asked them to reverse out of that area.
- A whale watching boat almost entered the lighthouse island and the south islands, but stopped short when I went outside and made myself visible.

Technical

Over the last 48 hours, for some reason, the batteries were draining faster than usual and even running the generator for 2+ hours daily wasn’t enough. This morning the batteries came to a critical low of 18%. I got in touch with Guy over IM and we troubleshooted the cause to be excess power consumption from the student house. After closing a few switches and unplugging some machines, I ran the generator for 4 hours and was able to bring the batteries back up to 100%. The bright sun all day today definitely also helped juice the batteries up faster.

Ecological