Category Archives: Energy

Benchmark

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Resurrected with found and modified pieces, this old bench graces the front of the science house now with a broad panorama for sunset viewing.

Resurrected with found and modified pieces, this old bench graces the front of the science house now with a broad panorama for sunset viewing.

Dawn broke in reds and pinks heralding another glorious day. Early on there were feeble zephyrs from the southwest and east but the most obvious wind tell-tale on Race Rocks, the Canadian flag, hung limply most of the morning. Westerly breezes started in the early afternoon and developed into moderate breezes, late afternoon with gusts to 23 knots. The strong wind warning forecast is downgraded now to 15 to 20 knots westerly, overnight in the central Straits of Juan de Fuca and it is already dropping, as the sun sets.

No tour boats were observed in the Ecological Reserve although one hardtop sport-fishing boat cruised past the sea lions at a respectful distance and speed.

In the water new Bull Kelp are growing quickly, shooting to the surface buoyed by their float and photosynthesizing faster than any land plant.

Bull kelp, Nereocystis luetkeaena is growing fast now.

Bull kelp, Nereocystis luetkeaena is growing fast now.

A Northern Elephant Seal visited the marine railway for a snooze on the falling tide this morning. It was a perfectly symmetrical ellipsoid. From the light tower another 16 elephant seals could be seen on Middle Rock. Two more in the shallows of Middle Rock, looked so much like smooth rocks draped in seaweed, that they had me fooled for a while. That makes 19 in total, a high count for me so far.

There have also been a lot of Bald Eagles present with a total of twelve individuals today. I have been trying to figure out what they are eating and have seen them chasing both gulls and geese.

 

Five of the twelve Bald Eagles on site today.

Five of the twelve Bald Eagles on site today.

GwGumort

I have also seen some casualties, including three gull carcasses but they do not have the look of eagle food. The one in the photo above is completely pristine even after several days, with no trace of blood or predation.

Adult Bald Eagle feeding on fresh meat.

Adult Bald Eagle feeding on fresh meat.

This evening the eagles caught and ate something but I could not tell what it was, there were no feathers at the site where they were dining but it may have been turned inside out (skinned). Four adults and two sub-adults fed off the one carcass.

Glaucous-winged gulls in their fine new feathers, are guarding their nesting territories but have not started nesting yet.

Glaucous-winged gulls in their fine new feathers, are guarding their nesting territories but have not started nesting yet.

Alex continues to be my only visitor and we had a belated Easter dinner, highlighting delicious, fresh halibut. I wonder when the last time was, this kitchen had freshly jigged halibut? Alex resurrected a bench that was both broken and had missing parts. It now sits in front of the Science House with a view out to sea and east up the Strait.

The phone and Internet went off again last night and I didn’t realize it until late. The problem was different this time and required a UPS reset in the tower this morning. I am getting quite adept at restarting the weather system now and we also tried (again) to fix the wind direction indicator on the system. I had success getting the underwater camera going again but it really needs a good scrub. The desalinator filled up the water tank again, running on sunlight through the solar panels. I cleaned up the visitor sign-in cabinet a little and put in some fresh pamphlets about how the public can support Race Rocks through Pearson College.

Note this blog posted next day due to yet another failure of phone/Internet last night due to UPS overload in tower.

Dec 28, Warden’s Report -Race Rocks Ecological Reserve

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I went to Race Rocks today with Val George for the Christmas bird Count.  ( See other reports from  today.) The highlight of course was the discovery of the first record for the Boreal Owl in Southern Vancouver Island . Some other observations from my visit are included here:

2014-12-28gooseexclosure2 2014-12-28gooseexclosure1m
Several 1 metre exclosures for goose grazing have been installed on the grass  areas on Race Rocks. Winter grazing by the Canada geese (introduced to Vancouver Island in the 1980s) has resulted in erosion in some areas of the island, and grass turf cover is prevented.
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Drift Macrocystis at the jetty. This Giant Kelp can grow anchored at great depths but winter storms will lift it up and the  main contribution to energy-flow  in the ecosystem comes from decomposition on the shoreline. Macrocystis grows in areas of high salinity, so not in he brackish estuarine conditions of the Strait of Juan de Fuca , but not at Race Rocks  where it ends up only as drift in the strand line.
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A dead cormorant, (probably Brandt’s ). Interesting webbed foot structure.
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A 1st year juvenile Thayer’s Gull The breast had a hole and internal organs  were eaten. It was probably from an eagle attack.
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This year, the college has finished tilting the solar panels. Increased energy efficiency has been noted. They were originally installed flat since we were concerned that the strength of the wind may damage them. This hasn’t happened. View of the energy building roof from the top of the tower.
2014-12-28johanplaque ..
This fall a plaque has been installed to honour Johan Ashuvud, who as a student at Pearson College, was instrumental in having Race Rocks designated as an ecological reserve in 1980 ..

Other Ecological reserves wardens reports are available here:

Fog and sunshine

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There was a tiny bit of rain with fog early today and then it switched back to near gale westerlies with heavy fog interspersed with sunshine. It is a beautiful starlight evening and the westerly continues to drop. The barometer held fairly steady today with a slight increase this evening. Environment Canada says that a strong westerly wind warning stays in effect for Sunday with a chance of showers.

There were ten whale watching boats in the Reserve today and they were all well behaved. A dive charter boat with eleven divers aboard came through the reserve but I am not sure where they dove.

Two male kayakers , one in a green kayak and the other in a reddish-brown kayak came through the passage on the south side of Great Race in the early afternoon and caused a sea lion stampede. They then proceeded to fish right in the closed conservation area. There were also two recreational boats fishing in the marine protected area.

A few more sea lion brands were observed today including one seven year-old female Steller’s Sea Lion that was branded as a pup in 2007 at Rogue Reef , near Gold Beach in southern Oregon.

This was my first day to not see Elephant Seals and California Sea Lions have taken over the jetty and marine railway. Some of them are a bit scary looking and do not want to move so that I can do seawater data collection.

Three River Otters were out and about in daylight today. Usually you don’t see them and just guess that they are around in the evening as all the gulls lift off and call. There were two young, very healthy-looking animals with an adult. Maybe that it why there are so many Glaucous-winged gull chick mortalities here? (Just a guess.)

Alex was quite excited to see some of the old lighthouse artifacts including parts of an old Fairbanks-Morris engine. He also pointed out where the old granite light-keepers house had been removed from its attachment to the base of the light tower.

The tasks today were the basic, regular tasks of  cleaning the solar panels, running the generator, launching and bringing the boat back up in order to drop off Alex, repairing the jetty fence (twice) and taking the salinity measurement. Tomorrow is month-end report time.

 

 

Baleen at sunset

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Fog in the morning that burned off around 1030h. Winds reached 35 knots mid-afternoon. Light winds forecasted for tomorrow morning and increasing in the afternoon. Barometric pressure still dropping.

2 whale watching boats

1 recreational fishing boat

Last of the gull chicks are learning to fly. Another elephant seal arrived on the boat ramp today, bringing the number to four. Spotted a baleen whale off the SW side of the reserve at 2030h this evening as the sun set.

Courtney came out in Second Nature with a tour group this morning of alumni and then made another trip to do maintenance on the desalinator (which is now in working order). Cistern was very low so Anne and I ran the pump for most of the day. Continued with Anne’s training.

Elephant seals

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Light variable North wind most of the day, blowing strong West this evening. Clouds and intermittent rain all day. Force 1 in the am, Force 5 this evening. The barometer levelled out just above 1000 hPa around 1800. The forecast is for strong West, diminishing to slightly-less strong SW overnight.

4 tour boats
3 halibut boats on the edge of the reserve

I’m used to seeing the little zodiacs out for the marine tours, but there are a couple tour boats that are really really big. I usually catch them out of the corner of my eye and have to do a double take. It’s a bit like suddenly seeing a small house sitting off the island where it is normally just empty water. It’s crazy that a boat that big will casually pass past the end of the jetty, through a narrow channel that is ripping with the fastest currents on Southern Vancouver Island.

The males Elephant seals are more active and aggressive and have lots of little sparing battles throughout the day. The females might growl, but otherwise they are pretty chill. There doesn’t seem to be any patterns in groups in terms of sex, with the males and females spread out pretty evenly. Although the larger males tend to spend more time away from the group. There are still 2 small juveniles (nicknamed Jellybean and Peanut since they are so darn round and cute). One of the young adult males spent some time ‘chasing’ me while I scoped out the other E-seals. He also chased some sea gulls for a while. They definitely don’t hesitate to growl at the Canada Geese or Gulls when they are too close or fly over. I’ve been keeping my eye out for any E-seal flipper tags, but haven’t seen any in a while. Lots of Pigeon Guillemots today.

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Making water with sunlight

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Light Easterly wind. Clear skies. Force 1.
The barometer is still falling, but no bad weather yet. It is supposed to blow in overnight.

The Steller Sea lions are now all on the East side of Middle Rocks. There are about 10 California Sea lions around the jetty. It was a hot day for the Elephant seals. All of them except Scabby-molt went down to the water at some point. Scabby-molt just splashed in a nasty puddle for a while. The littlest seal spent some time lying in the shade by the Tank Shed.

I was told when I started out here that you have to run the generator when the desalinator is on, otherwise you draw down the battery banks to potentially fatal levels. However, last month the generator shut down without me noticing and the desal unit ran for another hour and a half with no problems. So today I decided to test running the desalinator without the generator. I made sure the PV panels were clean and turned on the desalinator at 1100. I checked it at 1115 and 1130, and every half hour after that until 1530. It ran no problem, with a good charge on the battery bank. The lowest voltage reading was 51.6V and the highest was 54.0V (bare minimum charge is 48V, we don’t usually go above 56.0V). So i was able to do 4.5 hrs of water production (~400 litres) off of sunlight. The success of this test is good news, because it means that on a clear day with 14 hours of daylight we can run our highest drawing appliance and still get the island through the night just off of the PV panels. I’ll have to try it out on a cloudy day, and it might need to be monitored closely on shorter days. But it means that we are closer to our energy sustainability goals than we thought.

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Generator Repair

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Light wind and clear skies for most of the day. Picked up to strong North-East/ East winds with rain this evening. This wind direction makes the South-East door whistle like crazy. The water is a total mess right now.

5 tour boats

DND blasting: several small blasts in the morning. 3 loud ones in the afternoon.

Erik brought Ric the electrician out with the new voltage regulator this morning. It took some fiddling, but the generator is back in working order. I ran it today for a few hours, along with the desalinator. Happy to be able to do some laundry.

The Elephant seals put on a good show for Ric. There are 8 seals lounging next to the pathways between the boat shed and energy building. They are the strangest creatures to live with. There is one juvenile that is getting  bolder with each day, slowly making it further up the path towards where all the other seals are piled up next to the hose box. There is one with scabby-molt that always stays apart from the group and avoids any seals that come to visit. There is one large adult seal that seems to be blind in one eye; it’s left eye has a hollow, white look to it. One seal has a flipper tag, but I couldn’t get a photo of it. Will try again tomorrow.

Summer shift change has been organized. Julie Bowser will be returning for her third shift starting mid-June and ending in late August.

Technicians

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Overcast/Cloudy. Moderate West wind all day.

Erik brought out two techs from Environment Canada to service the weather station at the top of the tower. They realized a wiring error in their system after we had one of the main inverters burnout several weeks ago. They also fixed the old-school barograph I’ve had sitting broken in the kitchen since I found it in a closet on my last shift. This model of barograph (literally a barometer with a drum+graph used to track the tendency of atmospheric pressure) was standard issue for weather stations from Environment Canada for many years. The unit out here is from 1961, with an upgraded clock from 1977. I recently found a spare clock and drum for it, now the only things missing are graph paper for the drum and a new ink tip.

Ric the electrician also came out to start troubleshooting the generator issue. After some scrounging I found several manuals for components of the energy system. So far he has found a broken voltage controller that might be the culprit. We are now waiting on the part to see if this is the only problem.

A group of Pearson College visitors (Dave Skilling + 3) also came out for a brief tour and visit of the Reserve.

6 super loud blasts through out the day from DND that left the techs a little startled since the buildings shake when a big one goes off.

Generator

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Clear skies, calm wind.

The generator is not working. Yesterday it shutdown a moment after starting up. The shutdown switch says it was because of “hi/low volts”. Chris suspects it is the voltage controller on the generator. The battery bank,charge controllers, and inverters are all running fine. I am glad that it has been sunny these past few days because there is enough light to charge the battery bank for basic operations. All extraneous power/phantom draws have been shutdown and unplugged. It is also a reminder to always keep the water tank topped up (which I do) since the desalinator needs the generator to run. The mission now is to keep the solar panels nice and clean throughout the day.

Slack tide kayak visit from two of my friends.
Chris brought out this year’s Coutts lecturer Massimiliano Gioni +a handful of students +a guest and 2 kids

Power Restrictions

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Cloudy with scattered showers. Strong West wind in the evening.

4 tour boats

I spent the day with Aileen and her advisee group. Because there were 10 students (with all of their associated electronic equipment) the breaker on the inverter to the science house was tripped last night which resulted in a total electrical shut-down of the Science house where everyone was staying.  Our system and these old houses are just not meant for that much of a power draw. Because of that little power outage, the morning was spent showing them about the energy and resource systems on Race Rocks, with a strong emphasis on living within reasonable means, especially when in a remote place like this. My solution to the excessive use of power was to only allow them to use 2 plugs in the house to charge computers and phones. I think (hope) it turned into an unexpected team building exercise where they had to charge things minimally and barter for plug-time. Either way, it meant that we didn’t have any more power issues for the rest of their stay and it is something that I will implement for future groups.

I counted 13 Elephant seals on Middle rock. They return to Race Rocks for a few months in Spring to moult. Although they look absolutely terrible when they are moulting, it is a natural process that they undergo every year.