In Memoriam : Pam Birley

For many years we had the privilege of having many contributions to the Race Rocks website by Pam Birley of Leicestershire, England. Pam was a regular observer on our remote-controlled cameras, and she made the most observations of any outside viewer on the website. For 10 years, from 2004 to 2013, she produced a monthly set of images, which we consider to be  a most valuable baseline record of the animal life at the ecological reserve during those years,  https://racerocks.ca/pam-birleys-images-of-race-rocks-2004-2013/

Clicking on   https://racerocks.ca/?s=Pam+Birley&submit=Search illustrates how prolific Pam was in reporting on unique as well as regular events at Race Rocks Ecological Reserve.  In 2005 and 2008  we were able to accompany Pam and her husband Dennis on trips to Race Rocks. She loved keeping track of activities of the sea birds and marine mammals and several times she was the first to report the birth of an elephant seal pup early in the year. We also mused that if a shingle was loose on a roof of one of the buildings, Pam would be the first to let us know. 

We are so sad to hear recently of her passing and we will miss her contributions greatly 

Race Rocks Ecological Reserve #97 Warden’s Report ,

We departed Pedder Bay on Second Nature with Greg who was taking Joan Rosenburgh out for an Ecoguardian exchange.  Before leaving we noted a new perch location on the new docks at Pearson College .

 

On arrival, a nice greeting from the group of Northern and Californian sealions near the docks

I took photos of all the adult elephant elephant seals still at the reserve :

 

 

There have been many improvements that the Ecoguardians and the college staff have done since the last time i was here.One important improvement has been the installation of a new toilet system which seems to be a big improvement over past models.

I was interested in relocating the spot where a new geo-positioning system was installed last year, since I had been unable to locate it one time when i was out there. So these pictures are for future reference for relocation. When scientists come out to recheck , the results from satellite triangulation at this spot can indicate the amount of tectonic plate movement .

 

 

 

50th Anniversary of Ecological Reserves in British Columbia

Often when we visit special ecological areas our observations are restricted to a limited view. In this video, we visited six diverse Ecological Reserves  with the goal of revealing some of their special features from  a distant viewpoint as well as a close up one. Under a special permit from BC Parks, Jamie Frith used his drone and a macrophotographic camera to enable us to present a unique perspective on the reserves.

This video was made for the Friends of Ecological Reserves with the support of BC Parks. We started the project in March 2021 and originally were only allowed by  BC Parks to film in  6 Ecological Reserves in the southern part of Vancouver Island due to restrictions of COVID 19. Plans to include ERs from the interior of the province also were not possible   As those restrictions were eased mid summer, we were able to extend our range and travel North to include the Nimpkish River ER,  in order to include a  representative area of mature Douglas Fir forest.

Ecological Reserves which we were able to include were: 

  • Nimpkish RIver  ER#118   start time- 1:20
  • San Juan RIdge  ER #83   start time- 5:58
  • Oak Bay Islands  ER #94    start time-11:02
  • Mount Tzuhalem  ER#112    start time- 16:38
  • San Juan River  ER#141   start time-  25:01
  • Race Rocks  ER#97    start time- 25.03

 

One of the goals of the Ecological reserves act is to provide protected places for research and education. Some reserves, especially those with seabird colonies  are closed to the public and only accessible  with a permit from BC Parks. Since it is illegal to fly a drone over any provincial (or federal) protected area without a permit, the use of the drone was possible only with permission and precautions for no disruption to animals.  As mentioned in several of the interviews, because of the sensitive ecological nature of the areas, the public is not encouraged to visit Ecological reserves.

THE 50th ANNIVERSARY: 
On April 2, 1971, the Government of British Columbia became the first jurisdiction in Canada to pass legislation to protect Ecological Reserves, places set aside primarily for ecological research and education, not recreation. The Ecological Reserve Act led to an Order in Council that established the first 29 ecological reserves on May 4, 1971. Fifty years later, British Columbia has 148 ecological reserves across the entire province. This video features just a few of the ones on Vancouver Island. In 2021, the BC government proclaimed April 2nd as Ecological Reserves Day in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the passing of the Ecological Reserve Act.

Protecting rare species and ecosystems is just one of the reasons to have an ER established. Equally important was protecting representative examples of natural ecosystems. See the wording in the Purpose section of the ER Act:
Garry Fletcher

Revisiting Intertidal Transect sites at Race Rocks

Watden’s Report, September 3, 2021

I was fortunate to be able to get out to Race Rocks on one of the last morning low tides of the season. I wanted to revisit intertidal locations around the island in order to take photos of belt transects in locations I had recorded with baseline studies back in May of 1995. Photographic transects are valuable records in the event of changes that may happen along coastlines, usually caused by humans and/or by extreme weather events . 

 

Images taken in 1995 can be seen in this index on transects: https://racerocks.ca/ecology/ecological-monitoring/

The belt transect files with images will be linked here when they have been processed :

Peg 6  Peg5: Peg 5a  Peg 5b Peg 14a,  Peg 14b Peg 115. 

I was fortunate to have the assistance of Cedric Torres, the ecoguardian in doing the work on the transects.

 

At this time of year the island is populated by many young  glaucous-winged gulls, some fully fledged and other son various states of maturity. There were also a number of mortalities around the island which is typical for this time of year in a breeding colony.  In the following videos a number of behaviours of the chicks are shown .

Harbour seals with pups are hauled out on the southern most reef, note the current was still  ebbing in this video.

The California and Stellers sea lions have started coming back in large numbers. typically the Californias outnumber the Stelllers at this time of year.

Beneath the tower, the Californians( barking)  are predominant: but there is alos a mix of the growling Stellers.

 

On the East side cove a large group of Californian Sea lions were hauled out. The ones here were very skittish, any movement near the east end of the  house would startle them

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Other observations : two orcas in Race Passage ( surprizingly with no whale watching boats nearby.  The nice weather on Sept 3 brought out many whale watching boats and as usual they approach closer to the north side in front of the docks than necessary and well within the distance for viewing marine mammal colonies. The sea lions on that side are more habituated to the presence of humans and these boats than on other parts of the island, but many still go into an alert stage when the boats pass by.

Only a few pelagic cormorants were seen on the south west tip of the island.

The Calendula escapes from gardens of lightkeepers over 50 years ago still exist along the pathways, although the dry summer has been challenging. I was able to make a new species observation of these green blow flies on the flowers.

 

This summer with the heat dome experience on Vancouver Island there have been reports of damage to intertidal life. I took these images of high intertidal level barnacles in the arintertidal between peg 14 and 15. which show very little damage from this event,

We checked out Anita’s pool #6 . The intertidal life in the area has been unchanged for decades.

On the west side of the cliff near peg 5 , we took these images on the vertical rock face as records of barnacle distribution:

And near peg 15 we noted these finger limpets in a shaded rock at an extreme high intertidal elevation.

And a follow-up photo of The ill-fated tidepool #13 which was readjusted in the hurricane of 2006

 

 

 

 

 

Juan de Fuca CODAR System – Race Rocks (VROC) – Oceanographic Radar System

CODAR antenna at Race Rocks

Click on this image for the data display on the Ocean Networks Canada website:

CODAR SeaSonde continuous surface current mapping and wave monitoring HF radar system.

This is taken from this page: http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/L22/current/TOOL1366/

Peregrine Falcon returns

Pam Birley from England took this image on the remote camera 5 today.  Almost yearly, she has spotted peregrines on Great Race Rocks using the remote control cameras . 

Falco peregrinus: Peregrine falcon –The Race Rocks Taxonomy

Why are the Waters around Race Rocks so Nutrient Rich?

The productivity of the waters passing by Race Rocks contributes to the high biodiversity and abundance of organisms in the area.  Part 5 of the following journal article provides a clue for the incidence of high Nitrogen level throughout the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Free Access

Influences of the Juan de Fuca Eddy on circulation, nutrients, and phytoplankton production in the northern California Current System

First published: 06 August 2008

https://doi.org/10.1029/2007JC004412

Citations: 37

5. Regional Effects of the Juan de Fuca Eddy

5.1. Nutrient Enrichment of the Northern CCS

[44] The Juan de Fuca Eddy has been described as an “upwelling center”, allowing water to be raised from deeper depths than in classical wind‐driven upwelling [Freeland and Denman, 1982]. Upwelling in the eddy enriches the deep waters that flow into Juan de Fuca Strait as part of the estuarine circulation return flow. The penetration into the strait of this nutrient‐rich water mass is evident in a vertical section of ambient nitrate concentration measured in September 2003 (Figure 13). At the mouth of the strait, nitrate concentrations below 100 m (the approximate depth of the division between inflow and outflow) are >34 μM. Similar concentrations are present in bottom water along the strait axis, reaching ∼150 km east of the Strait entrance where strong mixing in shallow regions of high tidal currents mixes them upwards.

image

Vertical section of nitrate concentration measured in an along‐axis Juan de Fuca Strait transect (18 September 2003). Station names are across the top of the section and geographically in the insert figure. Continue reading

Pigeon Guillemots Return to Nesting Grounds.

Pam Birley of England made the first observation today for this year using the remote control camera 5, of the return of the pigeon guillemots to their nesting  grounds here on Race Rocks . She commented: “I haven’t seen them mentioned by the guardian yet but I took this screenshot on 3rd Feb”.

Elephant Seals From the Remote Control Camera

Elephant seal pups

Three mother Elephant seals and two of the pups, the newest pup is hiding beyond the top right mom.

This year, so far there has been a very successful set of births of Elephant seals at Race Rocks. This is the 13th year that Elephant seals have been breeding and having births in the ecological reserve.  Currently three females and four pups along with a large male can be seen from the remote-controlled  camera 1 from the top of the tower:

Elephant seal pup and male

26 days old Elephant seal pup and the male ~8 year old male.

nursing Elephant seal pup

nursing Elephant seal pup born January 12 2021.

Elephant seal pup born in December

Elephant seal pup born December 22 2020.

 

Recent Changes and Updates on this website

A year ago , we lost the services of storage on a Telus service without any warning. As a result all files, photos and documents, which had URLs starting with racerocks.com were not accessible, but fortunately I had a backup, so now I have been  gradually getting caught up in transferring several hundred items to this wordpress site which now carries the racerocks.ca archives.

Some of the more significant files which have been updated are as follows:

  1. The Race Rocks Species list and Image Gallery- species photographed at Race Rocks
  2. Weather and Physical factors at Race Rocks– all the abiotic factors pages have been redone– example: tidal currents: and wind
  3. Media Coverage of Race Rocks stories
  4. Archive of Events at Race Rocks 
  5. .The History of the Development of the racerocks.com millenium  Project
  6. The Situation with MPA status for Race Rocks
  7. Archives of the Tidal Energy project
  8. The Contributions of Pam Birley of Leicestershire England
  9. Current and Archived Video
  10. Archival records 1859-1906
  11. A translate dropdown menu has been added to the top of most pages and it should always be embedded at the top of the log posts if one logs in from the URL racerocks.ca
  12. Two archival files from the 1980s and 1990s  have been added recently; The Salmon Enhancement Activity and CoastWatch program activity
  13. Transects for Environmental Monitoring at Race Rocks