Day of the Dead ~ 3rd Annual Tribute

This is my third year writing a Day of the Dead blog post to honor the Southern Resident Killer Whales that we've lost during the preceding year. Unfortunately in the last 12 months, we've lost an astounding seven whales.

J48 was the fifth offspring born to J16 Slick. The calf was first seen in December 2011 and was missing the next month. I didn't get to meet this little whale, who in addition to mom left behind three surviving siblings: J26 Mike, J36 Alki, and J42 Echo.

L112 Sooke, born 2009, seen here with L47 Marina, L86 Surprise, and L91Muncher

The death of L112 Sooke remains particularly sad and mysterious. I documented her story in detail in a separate blog post. She washed up on a beach in Long Beach, Washington in February 2012 with blunt force trauma. The exact cause of her death has not been determined, but a necropsy showed that her wounds were not consistent with a ship strike or predation event. Following her death, activities of both the US and Canadian Navy received a lot of scrutiny, from underwater sonar testing to the bomb range that exists off the Washington coast. Hopefully, the result of all this is that additional precautions be put in place to protect this endangered population of whales from underwater noise and explosions that could lead to permanent injury and death. In the near future her skeleton will be on display at The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor. It is always sad to lose a whale, particularly a young whale, but even more so a young female. L-Pod does not have many juvenile females, without which this population has no chance of recovery. Sooke was one of the few.

J30 Riptide, born 1995, seen here with L53 Lulu and J1 Ruffles

I was shocked when I heard that J30 Riptide had not been seen this spring. J-Pod has always seemed like the most resilient of the three pods, but Riptide is the second young adult male in the pod to die prematurely in recent years (the other was J33 Keet in 2010). Riptide was the second known offspring of J14 Samish and despite being just 16 years old already had a huge dorsal fin that was nearly fully grown. One of the very first pictures I took of Riptide shows him with J1 Ruffles, and the two proved to be regular companions over the years until the death of Ruffles. That's why I chose to honor him with the above picture, showing the two males together in Boundary Pass several years ago. I imagine Riptide must have been learning a lot from the oldest male among the Southern Residents, and it's a shame he won't be able to put the knowledge to use as a breeding adult male. Riptide is the probable great grandson of J2 Granny and also leaves behind three younger siblings.

L12 Alexis, estimated birth year 1933

At an estimated age of 79, Alexis lived the long, fruitful life of a matriarch resident whale. She's the namesake for the L12 subgroup, a well-known portion of L-Pod that tends to spend a lot more time in inland waters than the rest of the Ls. Her strong ties throughout her life with the L28 and L32 matrilines seems to be a key reason these three families travel together so much of the time. She was often associated with both of these mothers as well as with their offspring, and late in her life seemed to have become the adopted mom of L85 Mystery, the son of L28 Misky. The probable grandmother of the iconic male L41 Mega, Alexis, like Mega, also had two notches on her dorsal fin that made her distinct. Earlier this year I wrote a creative piece imagining a day in the life of Alexis where she was surrounded by her extended family. A mainstay throughout my whale watching years and well before that, I had no idea I would never see her again.

L5 Tanya, estimated birth year 1964, seen here with her son L73 Flash diving beside her

Unlike Alexis, L5 Tanya was part of a group of L-Pod whales that does not spend a lot of time in inland waters. As such, I never got to see too much of her, and was always excited when I did as she remained a more unknown whale to me. She only had two known offspring, both sons, and both very distinct males. L58 Sparky was one of the first few whales I learned to identify around the year 2000. He was easy to pick out because this was a time when there were only 3 or 4 fully adult males in the whole population. Her other son, L73 Flash, was a bit of a Ruffles lookalike. Unfortunately both sons preceded Tanya in death. Tanya had a bit of a unique dorsal fin, at least to my now more highly trained eye. The middle of the back trailing edge seemed to bulge out, easily seen in the above photograph where she is silhouetted. She also had a distinct line across one of her saddle patches, and a testament to how rarely I saw her is the fact that I never got a great picture showing this unique marking very well. With her passing, Tanya leaves behind young male L84 Nyssa, her sister's grandson, as the only surviving member of the L9 matriline.

K40 Raggedy, estimated birth year 1963

Raggedy! I still can't believe you are really gone. Talk about a whale with a unique history, of which we only know a very small piece. One of the unknown parts is how she got all those notches that made up the tattered trailing edge of her dorsal fin. I first learned about Raggedy's interesting family when I wondered how she was already numbered the 40th whale in K-Pod when at the time there was no K39, K38, K37, and so on. It turns out this is because she, along with the rest of her family group, were originally designated as L-Pod whales. Before 1977 they were always seen with L-Pod. Then, between 1977 and 1981 they started being seen with Ks, and after 1981 were almost always seen with Ks. Michael Bigg suspected they might be Ks due to their acoustic call types, and in 1986, coinciding with the birth of K21 Cappuccino into this family group, the switch from L to K was officially announced, the only time any whales have had their pod designation changed.

Raggedy's family was our first clue that matrilines are probably more stable than pods, as we've seen other whales and groups of whales seemingly shift pod associations for both short and long lengths of time. While there is a genealogy written out for this group of whales (the K18 and K30 matrilines), it seems the mother-offspring relationships have never really been clear as the family associations were reorganized several times. What is known is that Raggedy was never seen with a calf, leading to speculation that she was probably infertile. 

One of my first-ever whale encounters was with Raggedy and her suspected mom, K18 Kiska, and probable brother K21 Cappuccino. I was aboard the Bon Accord in Haro Strait. The boat was parked as we watched a social multi-pod gathering milling about when we were surprised by three whales that popped up closer to us than all the rest: Kiska, Raggedy, and Cappuccino. This was the first time I had ever been this close to a wild whale, and the video camera I had rolling at the time recorded my frantic, excited comments as Raggedy surfaced right beneath me. "I got wet from the spray!" I called out in a shaky voice. "Oh my God!" There was no going back for me from that moment.

Raggedy leaves behind her stalwart companion Cappuccino. In recent years these two whales have often traveled between pods with K16 Opus and K35 Sonata, continuing the rogue ways of the family group. Early sightings indicate Cappuccino, Opus, and Sonata will carry on the unpredictable tradition in Raggedy's absence.

L78 Gaia, born 1989

L78 Gaia is another whale from a very independent family group: the L2 matriline. At just 23 years old, it also feels like we lost Gaia way too early, but unfortunately he follows a trend of other L-Pod whales that we have recently lost in their 20s. Since 2008, the family group has just been made up of L78 Gaia, mom L2 Grace, and Gaia's younger brother L88 Wavewalker. The three whales were sometimes seen with no other Southern Residents. On one memorable day they were spotted near Lopez Island and initially identified as transients since there were only three of them, though this is a bit hard to believe since all three have distinct open saddle patches that transients never sport.

Gaia was the uncle of L98 Luna, the young whale who somehow got separated from his mom and spent years alone in Nootka Sound off the west side of Vancouver Island. In 2009 Gaia showed up with a wicked scrape on his dorsal fin, a wound so gruesome observers worried it could become infected. He seemed to heal up from this just fine, and it wasn't too long before he had just a faint scar on the front of his dorsal fin. I always thought of Gaia as having a very broad dorsal fin, one that will truly be missed by me among the other L-Pod whales.

So those are the whales we have lost this year - unnamed J48, Sooke, Riptide, Alexis, Tanya, Raggedy, and Gaia. We have had just two new arrivals in that time. L119, a girl, was born to L77 Matia, a calf I was very happy to hear about. Both Matia and her sister L94 Calypso had calves in 2010, but Matia lost hers, and I could only imagine what it was like for her as a bereaved mom to watch her younger sister with a healthy baby. It must have been very bittersweet. Now she has another little youngster of her own, which amazingly I never got to meet this summer. Perhaps an indicator of the shifting patterns as a result of Alexis' death (Matia and Calypso, along with Mega, are also her probable grandchildren), the L12s did not spend nearly as much time doing their regular westside shuffle off of San Juan Island this summer. I saw very little of this family group this year and look forward to seeing both sisters with their healthy calves next year.

The other birth was J49, a boy, born to J37 Hy'shqa. In a rare case of a Southern Resident being born in inland waters, we actually know the birthday of J49 is August 6th, and he was born somewhere around Turn Point on Stuart Island. With his birth, Hy'shqa became the youngest mother on record at just over 11 years old. I was worried about these two whales, since the other young mom I witness (K28 Raven was just 12 when she gave birth to K39 in 2006 ) both perished shortly thereafter. But so far, both mom and calf seem to be doing just fine, and Hy'shqa has lots of help from her extended family. J49 is the first grandchild to productive mother J14 Samish and is also the first great-great grandchild to J2 Granny.

J49, left, seen here at about six weeks old following behind grandmother J14 Samish and uncle J26 Mike

This years births and deaths leave us at 84 whales in the Southern Resident Community. To the ones you have lost, you will be dearly missed, and to those that have arrived, we welcome you and hope you live to see the recovery of this endangered population.

That Was Awesome

Today was one of those days - the kind of day that made me want to live on San Juan Island in the first place. The title of this blog post is rather unoriginal, but it's probably the phrase I most uttered today, so I thought it was appropriate.

We went out to the westside around noon today with word that some whales were heading down from the north. Just as soon as the boats and some distant blows were coming into view to the north of Lime Kiln Lighthouse, we heard some people screaming to the south of us. I turned around and saw a big disturbance in the water just offshore of the rock to the south of me. A few seconds later, just long enough for me to grab my camera but not to adjust any of the settings, this big male orca surfaced just north of me, cruising north towards the other whales heading our direction. Surprise!

L85 Mystery heads north to meet up with J and K Pod whales

It was L85 Mystery, and right behind him were the rest of the L12 sub-group. This family group of whales likes to spend a lot of time off the southwest end of San Juan Island, going up and down, up and down, but rarely really committing to going north. They're well known among shore-based whale watchers as the group that just comes into view at Lime Kiln before nearly always turning south again. This afternoon, however, they were interested in going just a little bit further north to meet up with some of their J and K Pod friends. Best of all, as they sped north, they did so very close to shore.

L12 Alexis - the best photo I've ever gotten of this female estimated to be 78 years old. Prints of this photo available here

L41 Mega - prints of this photo available here

The whales all met up just north of the lighthouse, and spent a bit of time milling around before slowly making their way back south. While we were waiting for them to come back, we noticed a very unafraid little bird making its way through all the whale watchers on the rock. It was an immature brown-headed cowbird, and it was totally unfazed by all the human activity. It hopped right between my feet, and perched on my radio sitting with my stuff right next to me:

I've never seen anything quite like it! He even seemed to perk up and get interested as the whales started coming by, but then I must admit I lost track of him as my focus returned to the orcas.

All the male orcas seemed to be grouped up, which was an impressive sight with all those tall dorsal fins. Here's L41 Mega and K25 Scoter, and at least J27 Blackberry and J34 Doublestuf were in there with them, so I suspect the other L12 subgroup males were as well.

This large group of whales, including more than just the males, was a little ways offshore, but they were playful. They were just slowly making their way south, doing some tail-slapping, cartwheeling, upside-down swimming at the surface, logging on the surface, and they threw in a couple of breaches for good measure:

Prints of this photo available here

Then I noticed two whales that were much closer to shore, and heading right for us. Let me tell you, my favorite feeling in the world is sitting on a rock on the west side of San Juan Island and seeing this - a wild killer whale heading right for you:

Prints of this photo available here

It turned out to be J31 Tsuchi and L77 Matia, two female whales ages 16 and 24. I always think it's especially cool to see whales from different pods hanging out together. It's a glimpse into the social lives of these animals outside of their matrilines, with whom they travel with 24/7.

J31 Tsuchi - prints of this photo available here

A note on this next photo, to give you an idea of just how close these whales come to the shore - this image is not cropped, and my lens was only zoomed in to 180mm to take it:

L77 Matia - prints of this photo available here

So after the L12s had gone north, the L12s, K13s, and half of J-Pod (the J11s, J22s, and J17s) came back south. Where was the rest of J-Pod? They were coming down San Juan Channel past Friday Harbor, which gave us enough time to drive down to Cattle Point to see them down there. We got there a little ahead of the whales, and while waiting for them we saw lots of other wildlife, including a single male Steller sea lion over on Whale Rocks.

I was also watching a single rhinoceros auklet diving on a school of small fish. Every time it dove, bait fish would start jumping at the surface, and a single glaucous-winged gull was sitting on the water nearby and taking advantage of this feeding opportunity. As we watched, more gulls came in, and then more auklets, and then some pelagic cormorants, and some Heermann's gulls, and before we knew it a nice bait ball had formed.

Then the whales came into view passing Cape San Juan close to shore, heading south towards where we were on the rocks in Cattle Pass. I was excited they were on "our" side of the channel, but I know they usually veer out and go around Goose Island. In fact, I heard some people commenting on the radio that they had never seen them go inside of Goose Island. Well, if you keep watching these whales, every so often you are going to see them do something you've never seen them do before, and today was one of those days! They swam through the San Juan Island side of Goose Island!

They continued swimming close to shore as they passed us at Cattle Point, and since they were active and surfacing a lot I was able to find each and every whale from the J2, J14, and J16 family groups in my photos. The lighting was also perfect, much better than the harsh lighting off the lighthouse earlier in the afternoon. Here's J2 Granny with a Vancouver Whale Watch boat in the background:

Prints of this photo available here

J26 Mike was looking good - I remember seeing him before he was even a sprouter male, and now he's so huge!

J26 Mike - prints of this photo available here

He must have been feeling good, too - look at that tail slap!

Tail slap by J26 Mike - prints of this photo available here

The whales don't travel through San Juan Channel very often, but when they do I've never seen them kelping at Cattle Pass. That's what some of them were doing today, though! Here's J16 Slick, Mike's mom, with kelp draped on her dorsal fin:

J16 Slick kelping - prints of this photo available here

Not to be outdone by her mother, J37 Hy'shqa surfaced with kelp, too - a lot more of it!

J37 Hy'shqa kelping - prints of this photo available here

Behind the J16s were the J14s. J14 Samish was surrounded by all of her offspring. Here's a close-up look at Samish, who was what looks like black scribbles going through her saddle patch. I always think of Samish as having the most perfectly shaped dorsal fin. She always stands out to me:

J14 Samish - prints of this photo available here

Samish's oldest son, J30 Riptide, is another big male in J-Pod. He surfaced here with Mt. Rainier visible in the distant background:

J30 Riptide with Mt. Rainier in the background - prints of this photo available here

If you want to take another look at all the above whale photos from today, you can look at the gallery here or see a slideshow of them here. I'm sure you can see how after this epic whale-of-a-day, the only words I could come up with to summarize it were: That was awesome.

Whales Go Up and Whales Come Down

On Monday after work we went out Land Bank on the westside after hearing the whales had been around a lot that morning. Some whales had already passed heading north, but right when we got there the J14s were passing by in a tight group close to shore - it was an awesome sight.

From front to back: J37 Hy'shqa, J30 Riptide, and J14 Samish - prints of this photo available here

I couldn't *quite* get all five members of the J14 matriline up in the same shot, but here are four of them:

From front to back: J37 Hy'shqa, J30 Riptide, J40 Suttles, and J45 Se-Yi'-Chn

There was a gap after that, then another big group of whales came, including many members of J-Pod and the L12 sub-group of L-Pod. J27 Blackberry and J34 Doublestuf, two males from J-Pod, were doing a lot of rolling around with L77 Matia, a female from L-Pod. At one point Doublestuf lifted her out of the water:

Matia lost her first calf last year, but maybe she'll be having another one in about 17 months??

Shore-based whale watchers at Land Bank's Westside Preserve

Yesterday afternoon I decided to try my luck on the westside again. The L12s came back south on Monday, but the rest of the whales had continued north and I expected them to be making their way back down towards San Juan Island. Soon after I got to Lime Kiln lighthouse the L12s started coming up from the south, but just as they got into view they did the expected (for them) and turned back south again. I just saw a few breaches and cartwheels in the distance before they disappeared. Up north, J-Pod had split into two groups. One group went down Rosario on the east side of the San Juan Islands, and they other group was heading north (away from the lighthouse) at Moat. I was just getting ready to leave since the whale prospects looked slim, when I heard that the Moat group turned south.

Settling in for a bit of a wait, I passed some of my time by turning my camera to the big waves in Haro Strait. There were a lot of kayak groups out for day trips, and I suspect  some of them probably shouldn't have been out there. This group decided to turn back but they were still dealing with some pretty rough seas. It didn't look like much fun to me!

Since we're in inland waters here we don't often get much wave action along the rocky shoreline, especially in the summer. Yesterday was an exception, so I took some wave photos while I was waiting, too. Here's one of my favorites:

Finally around 6 PM we could see some blows to the north, and by 6:30 the whales were passing us, porpoising south through the waves against the strong flood tide. This isn't a black and white shot, but it almost looks like it since it's taken into the harsh late afternoon light:

The highlight of this passby was seeing new mom K27 Deadhead and her calf K44 porpoising side by side. The little guy was almost completely hidden by the splashes they were creating, with usually just his dorsal fin visible. Here's the one shot I got that shows a little more of him:

K25 Scoter was one of the last whales to pass by, and he was porpoising a ways offshore. It was a neat sight with the Olympic Mountains lit up in the distance behind him:

Backlit Killer Whales

Yesterday and today I've seen orcas heading south past Lime Kiln in the mid-afternoon, which means the whales have been very backlit and hard to identify. Not that I'm complaining! For a while they were on a  circuit that had them passing the westside of the island in the early mornings when I was at work, so I'm very glad to have seen them for two days in a row after many missed sightings.

On Friday afternoon J and K Pods passed Lime Kiln. Many of the whales were quite a ways offshore, so it was hard to figure out if everyone was there or not. Here are a few photos of the whales I was able to ID....

K20 Spock and her son, K38 Comet

Adult male J26 Mike cartwheeling

J30 Riptide, who has a very tall fin for being just 16 years old

Check out the close encounter these folks got. I'm pretty sure that's J37 Hy'shqa who came up right beside them. They were NOT following federal regulations and parked in the path of the whales. Not to mention it didn't seem like a particularly good idea to be out there in a boat like that with that many children in what were pretty big swells.

Today (Saturday) it was just K-Pod that passed the lighthouse, but it looked like the pod had reunited after the K13 family group had split off and was traveling with J-Pod for quite some time. Among the leaders was K21 Cappuccino, a big male that breached twice a little ways offshore:

I also got a quick glimpse of K27 Deadhead, who just this week had a brand new calf, designated K44. It's amazing how tiny newborn killer whales look next to their 20+ feet mamas! Unfortunately my only picture of him (he was pushed by Deadhead upside down near a research boat on the day he was first seen, leading to them being able to determine he was a boy) turned out blurry, so I'll have to wait for another opportunity to share a photo of him.

I did get this shot of K14 Lea and two of her offspring, K26 Lobo (another huge male) and the three year-old K42 Kelp:

On both days the initial rumors were that it was a superpod heading south towards San Juan Island, but on Friday it was Js and Ks and on Saturday just Ks. I think it's pretty cool that even during the height of summer with so many people on shore and on the water watching these whales in inland waters that it's hard to keep track of them all. L-Pod clearly must have broken off at some point, and maybe Js did the same today and looped around back north to the Fraser River instead of coming south to San Juan Island. Maybe the whale reports collected by Orca Network will shed some light on it, or perhaps we'll just never know.

July 17th - A Foggy Morning With Js

This post is from Saturday morning's trip - a bit delayed because I'm switching internet providers at home and have been without internet for a few days. If you are looking for pictures from Sunday's trips, I will get them up tomorrow, when hopefully I will be back up and running! To answer Dave's question from the morning of the 17th, though - yes, we do see whales in the fog!

I normally associate foggy mornings with August, but we’ve already had several foggy days so far this July. It was pretty patchy fog today, so as we cruised up San Juan Channel we were enjoying the sunshine, and when we got near the whales at first we got to watch them emerging from the fog, which was neat. As they continued north towards us, however, the fog seemed to follow them and soon we were encircled with fog too!

Some people might think viewing whales in the fog is less fun than in the sun, but we actually have some pretty spectacular encounters with the whales in the fog and in addition to providing conditions for some interesting photographs to me it always make the experience seem almost more magical.

Today we caught up with part of J-Pod and the first whales we saw were J1 Ruffles, J2 Granny, and the J14 family group. Here from left to right are J1 Ruffles, J14 Samish, and J30 Riptide:

L7 Canuck and L53 Lulu were also nearby, as they have seemingly switched back to hanging out with J-Pod for a while after hanging with other L-Pod whales earlier in the season. L7 Canuck did a series of big tail slaps:

In addition to the whales, there were a lot of rhinoceros auklets around. I wonder how these and other sea birds, that normally fly just over the surface of the water, manage to navigate through the fog without hitting anything?

While watching the whales we heard several different ships sounding their fog horns, and eventually one would appear from the mists. Here is the Washington State Ferry Chelan coming across Haro Strait in the fog.

Before we left we saw the whales do quite a few spyhops. Normally we’ll just see a single spyhop here and there, so it was unusual to see several sequences of spyhops by different whales. I wonder what they make of trying to see through the foggy air? This spyhop was by J2 Granny:

On the way back to Friday Harbor we went through Spieden Channel, where we were again in the sunshine. The clearer conditions allowed us to see multiple bald eagles soaring over Spieden Island. We also went by Sentinel Island where there were lots of harbor seals hauled out. We are now in the middle of the pupping season and many females have little pups right next to them. There are two in this photo.

Superpod "Terns" Around

As long as I'm seeing whales and awesome bird sightings, I figure I might as well keep the bad bird puns going....

Often while watching whales, as we were today aboard the Western Explorer, I don't pay as much attention to the birds, and just dismiss anything white flying overhead as a glaucous-winged gull. Today, however, one such bird caught my attention when it dropped out of the sky and into the water and emerged with a fish in its blood red bill - that's no gull! It was in fact a Caspian tern, the third one I've seen in the San Juan Islands this season:

But all three pods did indeed TURN around this morning. After heading north along the westside of San Juan Island they did a 180 and started heading back south by the time we met up with them between Open Bay and Andrews Bay. The whales were in several large, playful groups and we saw spyhopping, tail slapping, pec slaps, cartwheels, tail waves, and yes, even a couple breaches:

At first I thought just J and K Pods were present. We saw J1 Ruffles, as well as the J14 Samish group, represented in part here by J14 Samish on the left and her son J30 Riptide on the right:

Then I also saw male K21 (in the middle in the back) and K40 Raggedy (on the right) in the last group of whales we saw, but it wasn't until I looked at my photos that I saw L84 Nyssa (on the left), another young male, was traveling with them a well, confirming that L-Pod was present. I always love trying to figure out who is traveling with whom when all three pods are present and the whales "mix up" from their regular family groupings. For those bird lovers that read my blog notice the little rhinoceros auklet fleeing the scene to the left of the whales. I always wonder how scared those guys must feel when suddenly a whale surfaces right underneath them!

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