snorkeling | Race Rocks Ecological Reserve-

Wind: yesterday 12-35 knots from W, today 2-28 knots from N to S to W
Sea State: yesterday rough with chop up to 1 m, today calm until turning rough in evening
Visibility: both days 10-15 NM
Sky: yesterday partly cloudy, today clear turning overcast in late afternoon
Temperature: yesterday 6-7 °C, today 4-7 °C
Atmospheric CO2: 414.12 ppm (recorded by NOAA at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii)

Routine tasks were done over the weekend: making water with the desalinator, tidying the Tank Shed, refuelling the generator and writing the month end report.

The elephant seals rested on land for most of the weekend. The youngest female pup joined the oldest male pup on the boardwalk by the jetty.

There was more than the usual amount of self-propelled activity in the ecological reserve today. This morning, a group of five people spent two hours snorkelling at various spots around the main island. One person spotted in the small inflatable boat, while the other four snorkelled in pairs. This afternoon, two big canoes with 12 people each paddled by. They might have paddled around the island, but I only noticed them passing north through Middle Channel.

No boats were around yesterday, due to the rough seas. Today, other than the boats mentioned above, there were four tour boats and one pleasure boat.

: Colourful Leap Day sunset

: Snorkellers getting back into their boat near the South Islands

: Big canoe in Middle Channel

Weather:

Visibility 15+ NE
Sky overcast, cloudy
Wind 15-25 kn N
Water moderate waves, white caps.

Visitors/Boats:

Around 15 whale watching boats yesterday
Corey, Guy, and a student with their visiting grandparents visited yesterday, and delivered water- the desalinator is on the horizon!
We are ending our term on Race Rocks tomorrow, so Greg and Guy will come for a debrief before the next eco-guardian takes over.

Yesterday we saw a pleasure craft enter the reserve and drop snorkelers into the water less than 100 m from our jetty, within 5 m of shore and the hauled out sea lions. The animals were distressed and swam around the snorkelers barking. The current was flooding very quickly (5 knots), which creates dangerous water currents, eddies, and upwellings. We as well as Corey in Second Nature motioned for the boat to move away, but they simply gathered the snorkelers and moved around the corner where they presumably thought we would not see them. An eco-tourism vessel in the reserve also noticed them and contacted us to let us know, out of concern for their safety given the animals present and the currents at the time.

In the past scuba divers and vessels have found themselves capsized or pulled away from their dive site and rescued by helicopter, and in 2015 a diver went missing and was found deceased days after they disappeared by a fisherman after rescue crews were not able to find them. We were especially concerned for this group’s safety due to lack of float marking their position and the frequent boating traffic through the reserve. In the past, seal pups have been decapitated by vessels passing through too quickly and unable to see them. If these snorkelers had been pulled away by the currents, there would have been a high chance of being struck by a vessel unable to see them in the rough water.

: Snorkelers entering the water next in Race Passage.

: A distressed sea lion very close to the snorkelers. Some of these animals weigh 500+ kg.

Ecological:

The sea lions population continues to grow! We are having to repair the fences sometimes twice per day. It seems like a more powerful electric fence energizer could be a good idea.
We spotted a little Greylag goose among the Canadian geese yesterday.
The sea lion that we spotted on Sept. 12th with an apparent propeller wound to his head is still here. He stays near the jetty and seems to have some behavioural anomalies, presumably due to the head injury. He is not afraid of us like the others, and does not move away into the water with the others when we clear the jetty. We haven’t had any problems but are weary that his behaviour could be unpredictable. Marty (the vet that came to aid in rescuing the entangled sea lion) mentioned that sometimes when this happens a shard of their skull can splinter and cause a brain infection. We hope this little guy is on the mend.
There have been many Canadian Geese passing through this week; A few days ago we counted over 20. The geese are not native to the island, but according to Gary Fletcher they arrived somewhere in the 80’s as the population of geese on Vancouver Island were introduced/grew. Addling the eggs began somewhere in the late 90’s. Unfortunately, this year two nests survived and hatched goslings, meaning that 20 geese left the island after 8 nested here in the spring.