NE wind and tankers

Weather:  

  • wind NE 25-30 knots, 3 ft chop
  • temperature remaining near or below freezing

Ecological: several tankers passed by the reserve today, a couple are photographed below.  As shown in the screen shot from MarineTraffic.com there were 5 tankers (red) across the straight, in Port Angeles, in the morning.screen-shot-2016-12-08-at-7-58-23

Maintenance:  continue to monitor water lines, running some heat tape overnight

Other: transcribed and sent off seawater data for the month of November

Freeze up coming

A group of visitors from the college was planned to arrive around noon but the trip was canceled due to poor weather conditions.

Weather:

  • Fog horn started up at 1 am, light fog, didn’t last very long.
  • Wind NE 15-25 knots most most of the day.
  • The forecast is calling for temperatures to fall below freezing in the coming days.
  • Fresh snow visible along the coast in Metchosin

snow-dec-6-2

snow-dec-6-3

 

 

 

 

Maintenance:

  • Checked on exposed water lines, started up assistant house furnace to keep above freezing.
  • Did some clean up of blown off roof shingles, broken gutters, pipe, etc.
  • Ran derrick engine
  • Cleared boat ramp
  • Generator automatically shut down due to overspeed fault.
  • Requested new log peavey to replace old broken one.

Boats:

  • Photos below of The Argent Daisy, a chemical tanker, passing by Race Rocks.

 

March 4 – Eagle Gathering

Sunny
Wind: 8 knots NNE in the morning, diminishing in the afternoon and switching to W in the evening
Air Temperature: High 9C, Low 4C
Ocean Temperature: 8.8C

Twelve bald eagles were hanging out on the South Islands this morning. Many of them stuck around for the rest of the day, flying to different perches around the reserve.

Chunk left the main island at some point last night. The female elephant seal is still camped out to the east of the main house.

Courtney and Max visited for a couple hours this morning to do some maintenance on the cameras and other technology. Camera 5 is almost online again. One more replacement part needs to be installed in the coming days. The Davis weather station is back up and running after a few days offline. Thanks to Max fixing the computer that uploads the weather data.

There was more munitions blasting today at nearby Rocky Point.

Three eco tour boats visited the reserve today.

Peregrine, Eagles and Wind

The wind gusts reached 39 knots from the west this morning.  The general wind trend throughout the day was between 11 and 32 knots from the west, with slight fluctuations to the north and south.  The barometer generally went down from 1001 hPa to 997 hPa, with a few dips upwards as the sun broke through the clouds.

The approaching Arctic blast of cold weather will bring a chance that the thermometer might drop from 7oC to below 0oC tonight for the first time in a while.  Heating coils and warm thoughts have been deployed around the buildings to prevent pipes from freezing.

There was one whale watching boat seen in the reserve at 12:30.  A couple boats gathered to view humpback whales to the east of the reserve in the mid afternoon.

There were a couple of bald eagles around for most of the day, one adult and one juvenile. At 10:00 in the morning, a peregrine falcon was chasing after the juvenile eagle over the north of Great Race and Middle Channel.  The size difference of the eagle and peregrine took me by surprise.  I had never seen the much smaller peregrine next to a bald eagle. This might be the same peregrine that Pam Birley has seen over the past week.  It had dark chest feathers, which indicates it is a juvenile peregrine falcon.

The desalinator worked hard today to make about 800 litres of fresh water.  With a maximum output of 1.5 litres per minute, the desalinator is a very energy intensive way to create water.  Although, when the water is heated and added to a mix of leaves, spices and herbs, it makes great tea.  A necessity for Race Rocks.

Harlequin Ducks

The barometer continued to drop from 1018 hPa overnight to 1009 hPa this evening.  Throughout the day the wind hovered around 14 knots from the northeast.  The sea was fairly calm.

There were two whale watching boats seen in the reserve today.

Four harlequin ducks were swimming near the end of the jetty this morning, when I was testing the salinity of the water.

Overcast with Calm Seas

The barometer continued to drop slowly from 1023 to 1018 hPa.  The wind continued to blow between 8 and 18 knots from the northeast.  There was a difference in the weather today, compared to the clear sunny skies that have been the usual for the past week.  Low clouds hung over the Juan de Fuca Strait for most of the day.  There were occasional breaks of sun in the late morning and early afternoon.  The whitecaps this morning calmed right down in the afternoon, making the sea the calmest it’s been for the past few weeks.

There was one recreational boat seen this morning in the southern part of the reserve.

Pam Birley, from the UK, sent two photos of sea lions that she captured on Camera 1, located at the top of the lighthouse.  Pam’s photos show two branded sea lions that have never been spotted at Race Rocks, as far as I can tell.  See the photos below.  Thanks Pam!

The desalinator was run today to top up the fresh water cistern.  The solar panels aren’t soaking up as much energy, due to the clouds.  The generator was run longer today to help out the energy intensive desalinator.

The Future for our Elephant Seal Population?

Female elephant seal and pup born at Race Rocks , January 14, 2014

A goodbye wave?? Female elephant seal and pup born at Race Rocks , January 14, 2014 : Alex Fletcher photo

British Columbians can take great satisfaction in the fact that an Elephant seal colony is being slowly established in British Columbia, and we can see an elephant seal pup being nursed via a webcam on an island within site of Victoria.  The reality is that the risks these animals face in the Strait of Juan de Fuca if they are to maintain a population increase are now becoming even more challenging.

Currently about 6,000 large commercial vessels transit Canadian and U.S. waters toward Vancouver or Washington ports each year. Each month about five large oil tankers ply the waters down the international border within a few kilometres of the Race Rocks Ecological Reserve.

Under the Kinder Morgan Pipeline Proposal, up to 34 tankers a month would be loaded with oil at a terminal outside Vancouver, then travel through Haro Strait and the Strait of Juan de Fuca for export to markets in Asia and the U.S.  These are tankers in excess of 200 metres in length. 

The $5.4 billion expansion project would nearly triple pipeline capacity from about 300,000 to 890,000 barrels of crude oil a day to meet customer demand. Much of that future cargo will likely be diluted bitumen from Canada’s tar  sands. If approved, the expansion is expected to be operational in late 2017. The pipeline is operated by Kinder Morgan Canada and owned by Houston-based Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP.

The potential of collision and oil spills is unparalleled, and you can’t’ clean oil off a two ton marine mammal very easily let alone the volumes of marine life it consumes daily for survival. It would be a miracle indeed if we still have elephant seals at Race Rocks in 2020, the 40th anniversary of the Ecological Reserve. 

G.Fletcher

Link to other  posts on the Race Rocks website about the Risks we face with Increased Tanker Traffic

References we could all consider seriously:

  • Financial Liability for Kinder Morgan – Georgia Strait Alliance,

    “Residents of the Salish Sea region—Vancouver, Victoria, the Gulf Islands and Washington State—could see a four-fold increase in the number of oil tankers traveling from the Port of Metro Vancouver through Juan de Fuca Strait, if Kinder Morgan is permitted to build a new pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands to markets in Asia. Such a dramatic increase signals exponentially higher risk of oil spills and raises many questions about what is at risk, how the oil is “cleaned up”, and who pays for oil spill response. “

  • The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Marine Mammals by the marine mammal Commission, an independent commission of the US government
  • Effects of Oil Spills on Marine and Coastal Wildlife“Oil spills can impact wildlife directly through three primary pathways: —ingestion – when animals swallow oil particles directly or consume prey items that have been exposed to oil .—–absorption – when animals come into direct contact with oil inhalation – when animals breathe volatile organics released from oil or from “dispersants” applied by response teams in an effort to increase the rate of degradation of the oil in seawater. ——inhalation – when animals breathe volatile organics released from oil or from “dispersants” applied by response teams in an effort to increase the rate of degradation of the oil in seawater”
  • Effects of Oil Pollution on Marine WIldlife ”  Seals are very vulnerable to oil pollution because they spend much of their time on or near the surface of the water. They need to surface to breathe, and regularly haul out onto beaches. During the course of an oil pollution incident, they are at risk both when surfacing and when hauling out.”
  • Marine mammals and the Exxon Valdez Auteur : LOUGHLIN Thomas R. “This recently published book is a unique longitudinal study of the demise of an ecosystem due to a single acute environmental perturbation.”

Alaskan Frontier

AlaskanFrontier

There is a constant flow of shipping traffic passing by Race Rocks to and from Seattle and Vancouver each day.  Once in a while there are ships that are very loud with a low, rumbling sound that I can hear and feel in the house as they pass by.  This oil tanker, the Alaskan Frontier, on its way West towards the infamous Port of Valdez, Alaska, was one of the loud ones.  The information below was obtained from http://ais3.siitech.com/VTSLite/AView.aspx which tracks all major marine traffic in the area.

This ship may have been louder than others because as is shown in the  photo it is sitting quite high out of the water, likely empty on its way to fill up on crude in Alaska.  Which means that when carrying a load it would be projecting this sound underwater, maybe louder, where sound travels further.  Which begs the question: how much noise pollution are we subjecting marine mammals to in this area? What impact does it have on their ability to communicate, hunt, and navigate?  It would be great to  be able to listen to the sound underwater and measure these sound levels at Race Rocks.

As well as the sound, there is the unregulated emissions from these ships.  On a clear busy day there is a haze that hangs over the ocean to the East.  Sometimes I can smell and taste diesel fumes out here when ships are miles away.  On top of this of course is the constant risk of an accident; it doesn’t have to be a tanker to spill fuel.

With the potential of an increase in tanker traffic and tanker size in this area, to handle increased production from the Tar Sands, the focus of environmental groups seems to be on the risk of increasing traffic.  I think the question we should be asking is what is the impact and risk of the existing traffic?  Are there any impact studies being done?  More broadly: Do we value the ocean more as an access route for cheap goods or as a habitat for marine life?  What is the true cost of cheap shipping?  What is acceptable risk?

On a related note, I have not seen many whales this winter.

Name ALASKAN FRONTIER
MMSI 366948190
IMO 9244659
Call Sign WDB7815
Type/Cargo Tanker:DG,HS,MP(A)
Length x Beam 286m x 50m
Draught 9.8m
Nav. Status Under way using engine
Last Seen UTC 3/13/2013 1:25 AM
Last Seen Local 3/12/2013 6:25 PM
Latitude 48°15.225’N
Longitude 123°33.623’W
Speed 16.1knt
Course 280.0°
Heading 281°
Rate of Turn 0°/min
Destination VALDEZ, AK
ETA 3/16/2013 6:00 AM
Pos. Accuracy High (<10m)
Pos. Fix. Dev. GPS