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From 1921 until 1997 daily records of Seawater Temperature and Salinity were manually taken at Race Rocks by the Lightkeepers and assistants. In 1997 the station was automated and Lester Pearson College took over the hiring of the Lightkeeper Mike Slater and his wife Carol as Guardians for the Ecological Reserve and later for the Marine Protected Area. They have been able to maintain the daily records since that time. The records have been submitted monthly to the Institute of Ocean Sciences.

This is a file with the daily sea temperatures and salinity and atmospheric
data as recorded by Mike Slater:
The Sea Surface Temperature and Salinity from January 2009 until present.
SAMPLING PROCEDURE: Seawater temperatures are taken daily from a sample drawn 1 hour before high tide, Pacific Standard Time. For the sample, a rubber bucket is lowered on a rope from the end of the docks to about two meters depth. It is flushed several times by up and down movement and then hauled from the 1-2 metre depth to the surface. This has been the standard technique used by the light keepers since 1921 as far as we can determine.

The Mean Monthly Sea Water Temperature 1921-present,

The Mean monthly Salinity, 1936-present.

Also see historic sets of raw data from IOS for the British Columbia Light Stations

Dr. Kate Edwards of the University of Washington School of Oceanography is doing research on the sea temperatures of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. (Click on image to left).

She maintains web pages at:
Strait of Juan de Fuca page: http://www.ocean.washington.edu/~kate
West Coast headlands page: http://www-ccs.ucsd.edu/~kate
Jan Newton is at the Washington state Department of Ecology and is interested in how the Straits affect Puget Sound. She has organized the "Joint Effort to Monitor the Straits," which regularly sample the three stations south of San Juan Island in the map at http://www.ecy.wa.gov/apps/eap/marinewq/mwdataset.asp .
Click on the Station Group Puget Sound, and the Selected Station - Juan de Fuca.

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