Another glorious day at Race Rocks with westerly flow, basically a repeat of yesterday weather-wise. The barometer has dropped a bit over the evening and the wind has shifted to the southwest. Here is a graph of the atmospheric pressure that can be pulled up on the racerocks.com website. Tomorrow looks similar, windy with a chance of showers.

There were 33 tour boats today including a few that may not have been commercial. Some of the tour boats are really enormous and barely fit in the passage. There were at least 17 recreational fishers, again with some jigging by the rentals in the closed conservation area. Amazingly, a DFO patrol boat passed by and did nothing while these folks were slaying bottom fish in the reserve. I was up in the tower and couldn’t get the K-numbers as they are only painted on one side of the boat.

I did record another four sea lion brands in between chores and spotting killer whales travelling and feeding from the southwest to the southeast. There was one large bull, one little one with (probably) its mother and at least two others. I wasn’t close enough to identify them but if they were southern residents they are very endangered.

I was thinking about their chances of recovery when I noticed they were perfectly lined up with the Elwha River valley across the Strait in Olympic National Park. It reminded me of that Margaret Mead quote “Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” The recovery of the Elwha ecosystem is a remarkable story.

Not so remarkable, was the rest of my day; cleaning windows, killing flies, trying to learn how to use the camera, attempting to “train” the sea lions to get off the jetty and pursuing the regular drill of fighting entropy.