Christmas on the Farallones

Christmas day in the elephant seal colony

Christmas on a remote island is always going to be considerably different to a traditional one at home with family, and it was definitely true on the farallones. We were hit by 40 knot winds on Christmas eve, taking down our internet and phone connection. Our satellite phone also decided it wouldn't work, so our only form of communication was with the VHF marine radio, and I don't think the coastguard would be too happy if asked to pass on christmas greetings to family and friends. Everyone had moments of being upset that they couldn't talk to family and loved ones, but soon we admitted defeat and stopped constantly checking the connection status.

To pass the time we collected the minimum amount of biology data (a quick bird count, weather data, and the attendance and location of significant males and cows), played ping pong, poker, and ate a lot.

The team minus Sean, proud of our gingerbread house

 Although we were away from home, this didn't mean that presents weren't unwrapped. We had a selection of stocking fillers fit for a windy remote island (puzzle book, heating pads for shoes, chocolate) alongside point blue branded caps, hoodies and t-shirts.

Presents from Point Blue under the tree.

 Despite having glorious sunshine, 60 miles of visibility and 14c temperatures on Christmas day, we were blessed with the Farallon version of snow (foam and bubbles from breaking waves). The seals didn't seem that impressed by it though.

 As I wasn't too sure what to expect for Christmas dinner on an island in America, I tried not to get my hopes up. I shouldn't have worried though, as we concocted a tasty feast! We still have many leftover deserts which are slowly disappearing.

Overall, Christmas on the farallones was a lovely experience with great people, surroundings and food, although I am thankful that the internet seems to be reinstated (for now) so that I can catch up with loved ones and find out what is going on in the world!

We didn't have long to relax though, and eggnog and brandy stopped being consumed early as it was back to full-time data collection the next day. We had an exciting trip to the west-end of the island, which is uninhabited, untouched, rugged and unforgiving, which can only be reached by zipwire metres above breaking waves. I'll go into more detail about that in the next post, but for now here is a photo of two peregrine falcons fighting directly overhead.

Our first pup

Yesterday I was wandering the island doing a bird count, when I got a call on the radio saying that a pup had been born! I obviously went and had a look at the ugly / cute fur ball.

The cow doesn't seem experienced (she isn't tagged so we can't say for sure) as she isn't rolling over when the pup attempts to suckle her side though. She is also more concerned with gulls behind her than Andre who decided to put the pup's rear flippers in his mouth... We shall see how she does though.

 We have been having a week of rough seas, and our food shipment which was meant to arrive on Saturday was delayed until Monday, meaning that RJ left later, and Shaun was delayed coming onto the island. The landing was in the worst conditions RJ has seen over two seasons, and there were a few hairy moments, but we got all of our supplies and personnel transferred with only an island radio lost in the process. I didn't take any photos of the landing as I was too busy holding bow lines to stop the zodiac pitching into the gulch as swells hit it, but follows some photos of a selection of island occurrences.

Brown Pelican with a wave breaking close behind

A variety of age class males piled on top of each other

Andre staring at me

An oiled common murre found on the island. I watched as he preened himself on a rock, got blown off by the wind, struggled and failed to fly, and was washed up into a gulch with elephant seals snapping at him. He managed to hop up above them unharmed.

To celebrate our first pup of the season, we headed down to watch a rare sunset from the colony, and as we clinked our beer bottles together, a grey whale spouted off-shore. It was perfectly timed.

The majority of the elephant seals are constantly dribbling snot, probably from infections after being at sea.

Finally captured a few photos of the banded burrowing owl. He usually gets flushed from his burrow as we walk past and quickly disappears, but this time he stayed around in the open.

I debated whether to post the following few images as they are gory, but I thought I should include all aspects of science. A young californian sea lion died yesterday morning in our elephant seal colony, and so we carried her higher up the beach and Ryan performed a field necropsy. Although there wasn't anything that interesting about this individual, he went into great detail as we are to help on future operations. Warning, blood and guts are literally in the following images (after the one of pelicans with the moon in the background, silhouetted by a sunset).

Pre-necropsy

Fully opened up

Intestines and stomach laid out to check their contents (there wasn't much in the stomach, but a bit of faecal matter towards the bottom of the system).

 We aren't sure of the cause of death, probably some form of illness that led to it not eating. Cancer is common in this species, but as such a young individual and the lack of physical evidence suggests that wasn't it. When you live on an island with so many animals, you become used to death and stepping over dead birds (after clipping their wings to show that they have already been counted), but there is so much life here a few deaths are unavoidable. The common murre colony for example is in full force. They will come and go, and it is clear that they are here when you walk out of the house in the morning to see a "murre-nado" circling.

Common murre colony, taken from the top of lighthouse hill.

 As we are experiencing very low (negative) tides at the moment, we managed to explore 'jewel cave', which is usually flooded with water. It was very slippery on matts of algae, although i'm becoming better at climbing rock faces from daily activities around the island, so the added challenge was overcome without incident. The cave was small, but full of colour.

Our first elephant seal arrivals

For the past two weeks we have had numerous elephant seals on the island, although all of these have consisted of either immatures or sub-adult stages. Six days ago however, our first bull (Andre) arrived, and was followed by our first pregnant cow who arrived yesterday.

Me behind Andre. He is big!

We have also started to tag individuals, so I have been practicing on immature seals before graduating to the larger guys.

Tagging an immature under the supervision of Ryan

 We have also been stamping large males and cows to easily keep track of them from further away, rather than entering the colony to read small flipper tags. This is usually done with a stamp attached to a pole, with either dark or blonde hair dye, although with the large males who have just finished eating insane amounts at sea before not eating for several months, we are sometimes able to write directly on them. This looks harder, although is less stressful for them. Below are two shots, one of me "sneaking up on" "Lil Nibbler", our Sub-adult stage 3 (SA3), and then writing on him with dye from a tube (photos by RJ).

Now that our first cow has arrived, the males are becoming increasingly protective. Today Andre picked up an immature by the head and shook him, resulting in probably fatal injuries. Injuries aren't always accrued by purpose however. Yesterday Andre and Pete (the second largest male) chased a few SA1s and 2s from the colony, and as they were scrambling away, a juvenile got in the way.

Warning: Contains blood (although the immature was fine).

Starting science

Black oyster catchers

Saturday marked our first week on the island, with 12 to go. I've started to get to grips with the endless names associated with places around the island, including lighthouse hill, saddle rock, indian head, sea lion cove,  and the bone yard. I'm learning how to notice the small differences between the gull species that visit and breed here, and how to identify the song birds.

Brown pelicans in flight

After the aforementioned storm blew over, we had a few glorious days of sunshine, which allowed us to get stuck in to the science which the first week was leading up to. Alongside the clear skies, came brilliant views of stars however, which I took advantage of, taking photos whilst a barn owl screeched at me from above, waves crashed nearby, and sea lions barked in the pitch black. 

We have undertaken a few elephant seal census' (counting individuals in attendance around the island including age class), and I have done a cetacean survey from the lighthouse, seeing a grey and a humpback whale within an hour. They weren't close enough for photos, although I am hopeful that will change as whale season truly gets underway!

Now that the first bull has arrived, we are regularly going down into the elephant seal colony to resight tags to determine identities so that we can track the demographics throughout the season.

Andre, the first bull of the season (he wasn't happy that we caused a female to move away from him slightly).

Another reason for going down daily at the moment is to displace the californian sea lions in the colony. This is done with permission from the federal government, and moving them en-masse at the start of the season makes them realise to use other sections of the island, reducing the overall disturbance to them across the season, compared to moving a few every day for several months. 

A californian sea lion doing a face plant (or diving...) after being displaced.

Being amongst the colony is amazing, getting so close to large animals (bulls can weigh up to 2000kg), and you truly appreciate the power of them. I witnessed a display of this power, as Andre picked up a juvenile who was clearly annoying him, in his mouth, and proceeded to slam him against the ground three times. This happened only 5 metres in front of us, but the juvenile seemed unharmed. The bulls really aren't bothered by our presence, and it is possible to sneak up behind them when they are asleep and lift up their rear flippers, and even to punch a tag in place without them waking up. It is the young experienced ones that are noisy and snarl at you, both because they are inexperienced, and because they may feel like they have something to prove. It's kind of cute, in a spittle covered teethy kind of way.

As we are so close to these animals, we often notice any entanglements. There have been a few so far, from buoys connected with rope, to monofilament and packing straps. We do our best to disentangle, but often it is too deep, or the animal is in an inaccessible area. It really does highlight the requirement for responsible disposal of rubbish.

Ryan sneaking up on an elephant seal with a packing strap around its neck to attempt to cut the entanglement off.

We also see quite a few dead and dying animals, from birds to headless elephant seals from possible shark attacks. We record all of this, and I am getting used to telling the difference between a decapitated common murre killed by a peregrine falcon, to a cassins auklet killed by a barn owl.

A western gull picking at the remains of a seals skin

Talking of murres, a few days ago hundreds of them arrived at the island, circling as a "murre-nado" before landing.

Hard to see, but all the black dots are murres

A member of the song bird team has stayed behind for an extra two weeks to pass over the bird research to us. He has done a great job at passing on his knowledge, and allowing us to watch him band the animals he catches.

A burrowing owl post-banding

As we work every day whilst on the island, Sunday is slightly more relaxed, making a large brunch every week. Before brunch this week, we did our bi-monthly salamander survey, counting 43 individuals under 100 cover boards. Once a month we do a larger survey spanning 500 boards.

Arboreal salamander

Surviving the storm

The storm hit last night, taking out our phone lines and subsequently internet. We kept power, however the VHF marine radio was filled with static for most of the day, and our sat phone had a few issues due to the insane conditions. We survived though! It wasn't quite as bad as forecast, but still flooded the area surrounding the house and waves were breaking over large landmarks around the island. Thankfully the house was fairly sheltered from the wind, although it made it hard to stand in some places around the island. Due to the heavy rain, I didn't manage to get too many photos of the worst of it, although if you imagine worse than these waves, you may get within range of the full-blown situation.

Looking towards west-end

The raised crane platform at east landing where boats are hauled out of the water

In front of the crane, around the corner from where we take sea surface temperature readings (old-school style with a bucket and rope from the cliff)

Thankfully it doesn't seem like there has been any major damage to the island, although we are expecting a wet few days still. At least it means that we have plenty of water to last us through the season. This doesn't mean that we get to shower any more often however. We shower every four days as we rely on filtered rain water for all purposes, although despite the most rainfall in years within California, it has to last the island researchers throughout the whole year, assuming that the "drought" continues.

After a day of wandering the island in the rain smothered in many layers of waterproof gear and sheltering whilst inputting data, we should be continuing to collect biological data tomorrow. Here is a quick timelapse taken from the living room window, followed by a non-storm related photo of a burrowing owl (sadly I didn't have my telephoto lens at the time!!)

Welcome to the Farallones

Today marks my third day as a resident on south-east farallon island.
Below is a video showing the various stages of my journey to this point, starting in Edinburgh.

https://vimeo.com/113982690

The view west from SEFI

We landed on Saturday after an early start, sailing in the dark beneath the golden gate bridge. En-route to the islands we saw a grey whale heading south to Mexico, but didn't see too much else due to heavy fog. Everyone on deck slept where they lay and sat, and I woke up just as the islands suddenly appeared through the fog. It is easy to see how so many ships have wrecked here. The landing went smoothly after waiting for the tide to lower slightly whilst we watched inquisitive Californian sea lions checking out the boat and common murres and brown pelicans flying overhead. Transporting our gear from north landing to the house was incredibly hard work, pushing wheel barrows up steep inclines peppered with rocks. Finally we made it though, and settled into our home.

Since then, I have gotten to know Ryan, Aymeric ("moomoo"), Amanda, and RJ better, and gotten my bearings on the island. The first few days have been focussed primarily on safety aspects, both from our point of view, and from the animals as we try to limit our impact as much as possible. We have been trained to operate two crane types, one electric and one manual for both landing sites so that we can winch boats and supplies onto the island as the sea is too rough for docks to survive for long.

I've already seen many exciting animals, including grey and humpback whales, Californian and stellar sea lions, elephant seals (I'm still impressed by the size of the first bull that has turned up ready for breeding season), harbour seals, brown pelicans, brown footed boobies, the only northern gannet in the pacific (as far as we know), anna's hummingbird, and other sea and song birds. We are doing our first elephant seal census tomorrow which should be interesting!

Californian sea lions hauled out

The first bull of the season sleeping

Banding a black pheobe

A storm is brewing, and it is supposed to reach 18 foot swells with an extra 10 feet of wind waves (28 foot in total, just in-case that isn't clear...), with 55 knot winds on Thursday. The lead researcher out here has been present for 4 years, and hasn't seen a storm as big, so it will be impressive!

The view from one of our blinds / hides.

Aymeric watching the waves roll in 20 metres from our house