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