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