There's Work to Be Done!

 Being a relief eco-guardian at Race Rocks comes with a few responsibilities. There are two houses (the eco-guardian's residence and the student/researcher house), and several accessory buildings including a generator building, desalinator, and others that house the equipment needed to run the island. Of course there's also a lighthouse tower, but that is primarily the responsibility of the Federal government. There is always something that needs to be monitored, cleaned, or fixed.

Student/Reseach house on the left, eco-guardian's house on the right.

Keeping the power going is one of the main duties when you stay on the island.  This is a combination of keeping your electrical consumption low, ensuring that the solar panels are clean, topping up the batteries about once a week, and running the generator when necessary. There is a monitoring app on the computer, so it's easy to keep an eye on things, but you need to remember to check it regularly. The houses don't have any high-energy appliances like microwaves or electric tea kettles, but you need to run the generator to operate the desalinator and the washer/dryer. The eco-guardian before me filled up the water tanks, so I didn't have to learn desalination techniques, but I did get a chance to top up the huge batteries that keep the lights and other power going on the island.  Let the voltage drop too low, and everything shuts down!  Just like new electric vehicle owners have range anxiety, I will admit to having voltage anxiety for the first few days, but by the end of the week, I felt I had a pretty good handle on how the batteries were doing.

Batteries need to be topped up with distilled water every week.

Once a week, the eco-guardian conducts a general census of wildlife in the area. The best way to get a look at the seals and sea lions on the surrounding islets is to go to the top of the lighthouse, and if the wind is calm, outside the light room through a small door in the wall. The view is spectacular!

Great views of the islets where marine mammals haul out!

Looking down the spiral staircase in the tower.

Counting moving objects is always a challenge, so with hundreds of gulls, a little "clicker" is handy. The census lasts the entire day and sightings of passing marine mammals get added to the list. 

General cleanliness is an important consideration, too. You are walking through droppings everywhere you go, so you really don't want to be tracking that through the houses.  Despite being more or less a wilderness location, it's also a "shoes-off" situation before going into the living quarters in the houses, which are very clean and pleasant!

Main living area in the eco-guardian's house

Every bedroom has a view!

And then there's the composting toilet. Needless to say, there is no septic tank or sewer system on Race Rocks. The composting toilets mean that you can have indoor "plumbing" without having indoor plumbing, so that's a big plus. The eco-guardian's house has a state of the art toilet with two chambers: one for liquid and another primed with peat moss and sawdust for solids. Virtually no odor, which is amazing. But what goes in, must come out, and that means that it really is more like a high-tech chamber pot rather than an outhouse (that someone else gets to clean!) This translates to at least a couple of trips outside a week to deal with the contents.

The toilet even has a crank to mix the solids for faster composting.

Outside, the windows are washed frequently, and the siding periodically. Windy days definitely pepper the buildings with flying gull droppings. I made a little thermoplastic scraper to get some of more stuck poop off the solar panels and windows. 

Thermoplastics can be molded into any number of useful objects in a place like this!

A gas-powered washer is used for the siding and the sidewalks--tasks that I didn't have to do during my stay. 

This side of the house really bears the brunt of the westerly winds.

Strategically, waiting for the nesting gulls to leave and the rains to come makes sense for cleaning the sidewalks

Other responsibilities include making a daily weather report to Pedder Bay early in the morning. While there is equipment to tell you the speed and direction of the wind, and some standards for visibility, you have to make a judgement call on the "sea state" or intensity of the waves.  I had to look this one up!  There is an official scale that requires you to estimate the height of the waves from a good distance.  I really didn't feel confident about that, but felt pretty good about an alternative system I came up with:

1. Looks good out there!

2. Hmmm...  I wouldn't go out in that

3. Are you kidding me?

4. Don't expect me to come and get you. I'm not even looking...

Etc. 

Just kidding!  Thankfully, the sea state at dawn the rest of the week was calm, a description that I could manage.

How would you describe this sea state?

There were no students or researchers on the island when I was there, but in addition to cleaning the windows, I managed to find another task over there. With all the gulls and other wildlife on the island, we've already determined that there is a fair amount of excrement. As with any colonies, there are also nest failures, injuries and other reasons that some of the birds don't make it. With all of this organic debris, there are also a lot of flies, and when you go into a building, you can easily let a few in. Over time, the numbers can build. Fly strips catch the unlucky, but I was looking for more immediate gratification.  Armed with a trusty hand vacuum, I went flybusting!  Surprisingly, this is a catch and release program.  The flies are amazingly resilient, and a small whirly ride doesn't seem to have any effect on them.  I roamed from window to window and caught all that I could before restoring them to a more nutrient-rich habitat.

Catch and release flies!

At the end of the day, the eco-guardians are encouraged to write a blog post. It doesn't always happen, and it can take quite a bit of time to do if you've foolishly taken hundreds of pictures to go through! My official eco-guardian posts can be found for the week of Aug 7-13 here:  https://racerocks.ca/category/ecoguardians-log/

Another amazing sunset at Race Rocks.