April 2025
Spring has arrived!
Botanical Beach
We are in Victoria for Easter long
weekend. We did a bit of research into tides and Friday was
the day to go. We were surprised when we arrived around 11am
to find the parking lot mostly full. We walked down to the
beach and found lots of people looking into the tide pools.
My favorite pools are the deep ones with
lots of colorful sea life. The Anemones and urchins have
vibrant colors that really hold your eye.
It was a bit of strange weather - it was mostly sunny, but marine
fog hugged the shoreline. The ocean was a bit rough and some
of the beach had big splashes when a wave met the rocks. The
kids want their Instagram portraits.
Claira and Nara were really good at spotting tidepool
wonders. Between them, they found 4 Sea Lemons - a bright
colored sea slug that is comfortable in the high
inter-tidal.
The trail from the beach to the parking lot is about 1km. We
walked back up and headed into town to grab lunch. Sadly,
the food truck I wanted to visit was closed because of Good
Friday. We found a smaller cafe and had nice
sandwiches.
Uplands Park
Uplands Park is known for it's vibrant
blooms in the spring. The flowers cycle quickly so each week
an bring a different set of colors to the meadows around the oak
trees.
I was hoping for meadows full of
Fawn lilies but there were none to be seen - just Camas. As I
was in this park a few weeks ago and didn't see them, I figured they
had bloomed and disappeared in the weeks I wasn't here. A
little disappointed, I continued my walk.
I have a soft spot for shooting stars and I did keep an eye out for
them. I was quite surprised to see the Pacific Bleeding Heart
had already bloomed.
The large open meadows are often
about the details- the rocks have amazing communities of
lichen, moss and liverworts. I noticed a large patch of red
plants and at first I thought they were just some dried plan but
took the time to look and noticed they are actually colony of a
small red plant (in this case and invasive Stonecrop).
My
experience with Outerbridge is that you are rewarded for time in the
park. I walked around the corner of a path and found a large
bloom of fawn Lily. No where else in the park except this
short segment of walking path. Perhaps it's a little colder or
a little shadier, but I was happy to see these flowers.
Easter Egg Hunt
We live in a condo so there isn't a
private garden for us to do an easter egg hunt. We have done
indoor ones but there are limits to where you can hide things and
the house winds up in mess if the kids are too thorough. Nara
and Claira are 12 and 14 at this point so I was surprised they still
wanted to do an easter egg hunt, but my Mom had the stuff and woke
up early to hide things so the activity was on!
Due to sheer skill and extra vigilance, Claira came out
notably ahead this year.
Underwater Trail Camera Project
I enjoy photography and the ocean. I
have a small underwater camera that does take great photos but
it's no appropriate for time lapse. We found for Science
Fair that having hardware you made on the table helps get the
judges attention so I though it might be interesting to try and
build an underwater camera enclosure.
We did most of the enclosure buildings
back in February and a pressure test in March (it failed).
Today I did another pressure test (no leaks!) and then put my
first camera into the ocean. The camera I used is a
OV5647 I bought on Aliexpress for $21.29 CAD. It's a 5
megapixel camera with the 130° viewing Angle lens, roughly the
same as a 10mm lens on a 35mm camera. It's connected to a
Raspberry Pi 5 (local computer hardware store) and a 20Ah USB
battery pack.
The code I wrote (knowing very little)
tried to take a photo every 8 seconds. This camera has a
maximum exposure time of 3.7 seconds and I wrote some python code
to try to find the right exposure. I wasn't sure how deep
the camera would go or how much light is down there so I didn't
have high expectations.
The camera enclosure has 3 diving weights which are about 3kg of
ballast vs the 4.25inch x 12 inch tube that has a volume of
roughly 3 liters which displaces just over 3kg of sea water.
The pipe, fittings, battery pack and circuit board add a bit more
weight which causes the enclosure to sink. It was quite
windy at the breakwater today so unfortunately the enclosure was
pushed around while it took photos. I tried stabilizing the
images, but there are limits to what you can do.
The camera sled also shifted in the tube so the camera was closer
to the back and put some of the pipe and window into the view.
I connect to the raspberry Pi via the
network and I didn't have it setup for my parents house so I had
to wait until I got home to see what was recorded. I was
pretty happy with the results! By happy, it was terrible,
but at least I got something.
Back in Vancouver, I felt bad that I had missed almost all of cherry
blossom season. I decided to take a time lapse near Granville
Island with the last of their late trees.
Tags: Botanical Beach(8), Uplands Park(5), easter egg hunt(4), tide pool(3), camera gear(3), Outerbridge Park(2)
People: Claira(7), Nara(7), Janet(3), Helen(2), Lloyd(2), John(1)
Last Modified Tuesday, May 13th, 2025 at 21:02:42 Edit
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