The Christmas Supply Boat

Where has time gone? I cannot believe we have already been here over two weeks.
Today we had our first supply boat come visit along with a pile of maintenance people carrying out work on the crane and fixing our hot water etc. (Hot water is now running in our house now, it’s amazing).

This was a very exciting supply trip as the boat contained all our Christmas goodies. Parcels, cards, lots of Christmas food, and my camera lens that my lovely mother sent over for me, so now I will finally be able to get some close-up shots of all the fantastic wildlife!

Unfortunately I found out today that two parcels for me only arrived at the PRBO office today, so I’ll have to wait two whole weeks before I get to open them. But thank you to whoever they are from (AC and UJ?!)

Today has been roasting day, as hot as a good English summers day (not that I can remember what those are like). I was told the Farallones would be cold, damp, rainy and windy, however for the past two weeks that we have been on this island, there has been barely anything but sunshine.

This has been a great week. Firstly I managed to tag my first seal. After stealth crawling over the seal and gull poo covered rocks trying to not attract the attention of the Californian sea lions, I managed to sneak up on an unsuspecting dozing immature elephant seal and successfully tag its
hind flipper. This means that we can now keep track of this individual and see where it turns up each year.

Wednesday was an odd but wonderful morning. I was at the top of the hill for the morning gull count and at the time of the sun rising here it was also my Grandma's funeral back home. I couldn’t think of a better send of for Gran than the amazing sunrise I witnessed that morning over a mill-pond-calm ocean. The sight of a grey whale and the sounds of birds and seals lighting up the day.

You can just about make out the grey whale in this photo.

Did you ever see so many gulls?

This week we were able to conduct our first bi-monthly endemic arboreal salamander survey. I thought cetaceans and pinnipeds were where it’s at, but salamanders…. Now they are something else! I can’t believe I am 25 and have only just paid attention to these wee little slimy critters.

The survey involved traipsing around the island finding the numbered salamander boards. When we found these boards we had to lift them straight up so as not to squish and little sallys and move the board away and check the patch of dirt underneath. As we have not had any rain in quite some time, a lot of the dirt under the boards was very dry, not ideal sally habitat.

Once we had found dirt that was moister, the salamanders started to appear! Once I had caught the wriggly little fellow I had to let it climb into a clear tube so that I could measure its torso and tail length, then check for all of its toes (in previous seasons they may have clipped their toes to identify individuals), check the sex of the animal which is determined by looking for either eggs in a female or the mental gland in a male, which is a distinct mark or raised area under its chin.

Once this is done it is time for its photo shoot. I have done photo identification for bottlenose and rissos dolphins, sperm, minke and humpback whales, grey seals… But never before salamander photo id! That’s right, the salamander spot pattern is also like a fingerprint and so we can identify individuals by their spots. The mander is then weighed before being set free to nestle back under its board.

On a less pleasant note... We also had a bit of gruesome gore this week. A poor immature Californian sea lion was seen at sea pigeon gulchwith a rectal prolapse. It was not pretty. He stayed there for a couple of days perched on top of a rock barely moving, but we have not seen him since.

An adult female Californian sea lion was also washed up dead at sewage gulch this week. Ryan then proceeded to carry out a necropsy donned in a fetching luminous yellow onesie. By the time we started it was already approaching sunset and by the time we had finished it was totally dark. Ryan collected samples of various organs to be sent to the lab in order to try and determine the cause of death. It was fascinating to see the inner workings of a sea lions body and I was amazed at their flippers. The grip is just incredible.

This week also saw much fun and hilarity in the name of board games! Many a laugh was had. The food has also been great; it seems that as time goes on the food just gets better. Jane cooked an incredible veggie tart and chicken yum yum soup, Jason created a super spicy soup and bread with the most tasty and moreish dipping sauce and Ryan concocted a sumptuous squash and greens filled mac and cheese. There is no doubt in my mind that I will NOT be losing weight this season.

I also stamped a cow with hair dye today on sand flat. The sea lions have at last begun to retreat from the elephant seals domain which means we can get a little closer. Team work was great. Ryan and myself stealthed it down the rocky verge and I was first to stamp the cow, then just as we had planned, the cow rolled and so Ryan got her other side. After this he was then able to stamp Rusty the bull male of Sand flat. Bam bam bam. Done and dusted. Bob’s your uncle.

Seals and scones. Now that's more like it

If things couldn’t get much better, guess what I saw this evening as the sun set?! The illusive green flash! Yes. It really does exist.

Well I am wishing you all a very merry Christmas and thank you so much for the cards and presents, though I haven’t opened any yet so don’t give away any surprises!

Southeast Farallon Island

So yet again I am on an island. This time I only spent around six weeks in England before I took off! I was full of mixed emotions as I left this time, My cousin Cassie and her husband Dave put on a marvelous send off/ early family Christmas at their new house and I had been able to catch up with both childhood and uni friends.

However two days before I left the country my wonderful Grandma sadly passed away.

I was worried that coming to this remote island would be an awful decision with everything going on, but it has so far been perfect and I am making the most of every day.

It has been a week since I first stepped foot on Southeast Farallon Island, an island 28 miles off the coast of San Francisco, 120 rocky acres. The supply boat will only come out once a fortnight depending on weather and so before we set off we spent a whole day buying A LOT of food provisions for the island. It was all very fun to start with, but by the end of the Safeway shop in the afternoon we were all very weary and ready to collapse from an overdose of food shopping.

The three hour boat trip out to the island was beautiful. Calm seas, harbour porpoise, passing under the golden gate bridge just after sunrise… Wonderful.

For the majority of the trip we couldn’t even see the little island, but once it came into view I was overwhelmed, it was so beautiful despite being so rugged and barren.

We finally reached the island but still had to unload all of our gear before we could get on ourselves! The island has nowhere to dock the boat and so a crane is used to hoist up a small boat plus kit and people!

The boat then departed and the four of us, Jane (intern), Jason (intern) and Ryan (Mr Boss Man) were left alone on the island where we will stay for the next three and a half months.

My fellow seal stalkers are great, we have already had a hilarious first week and I look forward to sharing the next three months with them.

Anyway… Onto the wildlife. That’s what this is all about after all! I am here as a northern elephant seal research intern.

Over the next few weeks the breeding season will commence with the arrival of the first pups. Already in the week that I have been here I can see that there is a buzz in the air. When I first arrived we just saw heaps of chilled out immatures and a few cows and males dotted about, snoozing and doing nothing much in particular.

But now more females (potentially pregnant) have hauled out along with some young males and a couple of super hefty bull males.

Today there were two bull elephant seals in one area that looked as though they had had a bit of a scrap. We managed to identify them through their flipper tags as Rusty (alpha male of sand flat area for around 5 years!) and Herzog. Herzog looked to be in worse shape and so it seems that rusty had defended his territory well. A few younger males were also scrapping today, but it looked so pathetic it was hardly worth their effort really.

Each day there are different tasks that need to be carried out around the island which are divvied up between the four of us. Every morning at sunrise we do a gull count around the whole island. One person heads up the 109m steep lighthouse hill to count the gulls on the periphery, and the other person walks from north landing to east landing to count the gulls that the person on the hill is unable to count. Today I counted around 5500 territorial gulls and 1000 roosting gulls all before breakfast!

Talking of food, the food here is incredible! I have never seen such a well-stocked pantry in all my life. We each take it in turn to cook and every meal so far has been positively gourmet. Ryan started off the first night with a nice Mexican ensemble and since then we have had Jason’s Bacon wrapped peppers with goat’s cheese, a vat of Borscht created lovingly by Jane,

Stew, curry, toad in the hole and a variety of other delights. Every Sunday is also waffle Sunday (though this may just become brunch Sunday to allow for other breakfast joy).

So back to the wildlife. We have been keeping our eyes peeled for burrowing owls that funnily enough live in burrows. We have five that we have spotted so far and it’s always great to catch sight of these amazing looking creatures poking their heads out from a burrow with their beady
eyes staring down at you. Some of the owls live very high nestled into small caves in the rock.

A couple of peregrine falcons grace us with their presence each day, though for the past two days there have been three of them flying about scaring the gulls and anything else that gets in their way.

Today we saw a new sort of raptor in the air, this time being chased and pecked at by soaring ravens and gulls. It took us by surprise as we had gotten used to seeing our friendly PEFA’s and our resident kestrel, yet this thing looked MASSIVE. After much deliberation and the use of Jason’s super snazzy camera we could confirm that it was a juvenile bald eagle! The first sighting since 1998!

There are also Anna’s hummingbirds that hang around the bushes next to our house that we can hear chipping away as they roam and hover around the flowers.

Cetacean watches are also carried out from lighthouse hill whenever the sea is calm enough and so far we have seen lots of grey whales, some coming so close that I can hear the blow from the top of the hill!

Back to seals. We have five species of pinnipeds that haul out on the island. Yes that’s right, FIVE!

Elephant seals, California Sea lions, Stellar sea lions, harbour seals and Northern fur seals.

I have so far managed to stamp a large male and a hefty female elephant seal with numbers using hair dye.

This is so that we can easily see who is who once the season gets under way without having to look for the tiny tags in their flippers. It is ridiculous how massive the bull seals are.

I have also been learning how to tag the seals. It’s not as easy as it looks! Either the seal is sleeping with one eye open and notices you before you get to it, or else it’s friends sense you first and wake the seal up, or you nudge it with the tagger and it wakes up, or it’s flipper is in the
wrong position or a Californian sea lion sits up and your worried you are going
to flush them into the water and so you have to retreat! Needless to say, I have thus far been unsuccessful.

Gosh, there is so much to tell… and I haven’t even gotten to the Cassins auklets yet, which arrived in their burrows last night. I was cooking dinner and thought that I could hear odd sounds when Ryan tells me it’s the sound of cassins auklets ‘they sound like crickets on speed’.

Jane and I ventured out this evening donned with head torches to catch a glimpse of these super cute little birds and they were everywhere, just peeking out of and wandering around their burrows cheeping and shrieking.

Well I shall leave this blog post for today as I fear I have already rambled on for too long, but stay tuned for another update soon!

Bob's your uncle