Qualla: Race Rocks Ecological Reserve

Race Rocks Ecological Reserve: Introduction

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Isochrone, CC BY-SA 4.0. Most protected areas begin with a government. This one began with a school project. In 1978, students at Pearson College UWC on the Vancouver Island shore went out to a cluster of rocks in the Strait of Juan de Fuca to survey what lived there, under the supervision of two of their teachers, Garry Fletcher and Marks McAvity. What they documented was not an ordinary stretch of coastline but an extraordinary concentration of life, crowded onto a few hectares of rock and kept fed by a tide that never really stops moving. Two years later, the province made it a reserve.

Image: Isochrone | CC BY-SA 4.0

Race Rocks Ecological Reserve: Eleven Islets in a Current

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gflet (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Race Rocks lies 1.5 kilometres off the southern tip of Vancouver Island, at a pinch point in the Strait of Juan de Fuca where enormous volumes of Pacific water are forced through a narrowing channel twice a day in each direction. The reserve covers 2.27 square kilometres, of whic...

Image: Gflet (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Race Rocks Ecological Reserve: Granite Shipped From Scotland

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carport, CC BY-SA 3.0. One structure predates every protection order here. The Race Rocks lighthouse went up between 1859 and 1860, built by the crew of HMS Topaze alongside hired labourers under a contract the British government awarded to John Morris. It was lit on 26 December 1860, six weeks after F...

Image: Carport | CC BY-SA 3.0

Race Rocks Ecological Reserve: Standing Room Only

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gflet (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Haul-outs are competitive real estate, and Race Rocks is prime. California sea lions and Steller sea lions pile onto the rocks in numbers that make the islets look upholstered, roaring and shoving and sliding back into the water. Harbour seals use the reserve as a birthing rooker...

Image: Gflet (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Race Rocks Ecological Reserve: Managed By a High School

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gflet (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The 1978 survey by the Pearson College students did what good fieldwork is supposed to do - it produced an argument that could not be ignored. In 1980 the rocks and the water around them were protected as an ecological reserve, and the arrangement that followed is unusual anywher...

Image: Gflet (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Race Rocks Ecological Reserve: Trying to Harvest the Tide

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gflet (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. A current that strong is an obvious temptation to engineers, and in 2006 and 2007 the Race Rocks Tidal Power Demonstration Project put a tidal energy generator into the water to find out what it could do. It ran as an experiment for six years, gathering data on a form of generati...

Image: Gflet (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0