September 18-22: Whales Every Day!

This is why we love September - beautiful lighting, fewer tourists, dramatic weather, and ALL the Southern Residents hanging out! The last few days have not disappointed, with a lot of all of the above.

It started on September 18th when we caught some J and K Pod whales heading north past Lime Kiln. Some might consider this shot of J41 Eclipse a "miss" but I like these bizarre off-angle shots sometimes. She and J51 Nova were zipping north and hard to catch with the camera.

J41 Eclipse

Many of the whales were quite far offshore, but we got a nice pass from L87 Onyx and his newest traveling partner - J45 Se-Yi'-Chn. It's been an interesting new combo, but one I think is probably good for both whales! L87 had taken to traveling mostly by himself, and J45 has just lost his mom J14 Samish, so it's nice to see them buddying up.

L87 Onyx approaching

J45 Se-Yi'-Chn

The trailing group on this day was the K13s:

K13 Skagit and her daughter K20 Spock

On September 19th, we just watched distant whales off the south end of San Juan Island. They were too far away to take photos, but it was still cool to see a huge resting group, even from that distance! More whales had come in on this day, though, bringing the entire population of Southern Residents into inland waters. That meant things were perfectly aligned for a magical superpod morning on the 20th of September! The southern group of Js, Ks, and Ls must have gone north before first light, as not long after daybreak all the SRKWs were southbound in Haro Strait. We caught up with the slow moving trailing group on the west side, and spent two tranquil hours watching and recording them with our hydrophone.

There's nothing I don't love about this photo! Jason tuning in to our live hydrophone feed, with a whale surfacing offshore and a great blue heron flying by!

K21 Cappuccino kept going back and forth foraging just about the entire time we were there, as did that great blue heron. That gave me a couple chances at getting both in the same photo!

Speaking of K21, it had been a while since I had spent some time with him. It was nice to get a good look at him again as at one point he surfaced right off the kelp.

K21 Cappuccino

L92 Crewser came by several times, too:

L92 Crewser

While Cappuccino and Crewser spent the morning foraging, L85 Mystery seemed to have other things on his mind. He was in hot pursuit of J35 Tahlequah, and spent the rest of his time rolling around and playing with a mix of the J17s and L4s.

L85 Mystery in the middle socializing with whales outside of his family group

L85 Mystery with J35 Tahlequah and J47 Notch - I thought Notch was getting big until I saw him next to Mystery! ;)

All in all it was a very tranquil morning!

On September 21st, we again got to Lime Kiln in the middle of J and K Pods heading north. Again, they were mostly pretty far offshore, and again, they were going fast!

It was such a beautiful day out and with whales spread all over Haro Strait we decided to hop in the boat. The first whales we caught up with at Open Bay were some of the J17s.

J17 Princess Angeline and J53 Kiki

Following behind these two whales were the J28s - all of them! She's still looking thing, but our fighter J28 Polaris is still with us.

J28 Polaris - I breathe a sigh of relief every time I see her!

We saw a lot of blows to the south of us, so drifted back to see what was going on. We caught up with a group of about 15 whales including the K13s and a few other members of all three pods. They were swimming in a tight group, and kept changing directions, seemingly without vocalizing at all. They were so close to one another they may have all actually been in physical contact. It was amazing to watch as they swam in a circle....we could only guess at what they were doing!

First facing one way...

....then the other...

...then turning around again!

They seemed really undecided on whether to go north and south, going on long dives and surfacing first in one location facing one way and then somewhere totally different facing the other.

Which way should we go?

  Finally it seemed they decided to go north:

And finally we heard a few vocals from them, too! Check out a short clip here.

As the Js and Ks continued north, a couple whales held back...and it turns out it was the L22s! We jokingly say they always hang out at Eagle Point, because it's rare for them to ever come up north of Lime Kiln, but here they were!

L22 Spirit

Tail slap from L89 Solstice

Late in the day on September 22nd, the Js and Ks we saw go north on the 21st were making their way back down. First came the K12s and K13s in the late afternoon passing the west side in harsh sun glare.

By the time the others made it down a couple hours later, the sun was already low in the sky (at 6:30?! Days are definitely noticeably shorrter!). The wind and wave action had picked up, too, making for a really dramatic backdrop for a whale passby. On top of that, the whales were fairly close to shore and super active! The turbulent waters also seemed to be attracting lots of birds, which were flying around everywhere during the pass. It was a bit chaotic but fun to watch! I ended up with many shots like this one, with gulls flying across as I tried to photograph whales. Can you see the four distant whales in this photo?

The whole pass ended up feeling really magical; the big waves made all the whale surface activity extra splashy, and all the splashes were backlit by the setting sun!

It was hard to know where to point the camera, especially since the first whales were in a pretty large group! I definitely missed more shots than a got, but here are a few more moments I did manage to capture:

J17 Princess Angeline

J27 Blackberry

J35 Tahlequah

It was one of those very memorable passbys, and I try extra hard to soak up moments like these at the end of the season, when you just don't know how many more times you'll see these guys before the long winter months that lie ahead!

August 17th: I finally see K21!

By mid-August, the L54 sub-group was the only Southern Resident group yet to come into Haro Strait this summer, but there was one other whale I hadn't seen yet this summer: K21 Cappuccino. He's not around as much as the rest of K-Pod, but he had been seen numerous times, and I had even seen his regular traveling companions K16 Opus and K35 Sonata. I couldn't imagine I would go the whole season without seeing him - I've always managed to see everyone in the population at least once. Finally, on the evening of August 17th, we came across a trio of whales right near Open Bay - and it was K21 Cappuccino, K16 Opus, and K35 Sonata.

K21 Cappuccino, K35 Sonata, and K16 Opus

Cappuccino - such a striking whale!

The whales were really spread out. There was another individual traveling well offshore of us, but after a fleet of Canadian Naval boats left a huge wake, he got active surfing the wake and breaching several times.

I actually missed the first breach because I was distracted by this common murre who drifted right alongside us:

A little further south we were following alongside J27 Blackberry, who we thought was by himself. We should have known his little brother Mako was around somewhere, but we didn't see him....until he popped up right alongside us! I think I literally jumped on his first surfacing, but I recovered in time to snap this photo on his second:

The last group of whales we saw before heading in was the K12 matriline - here are K22 Sekiu and K33 Tika, two whales I've gotten to spend a lot of time with this summer.

K22 Sekiu and K33 Tika

It was another beautiful summer evening on the water!

A Surprise Visit From Residents

Last year, we were treated to a superpod traveling past Lime Kiln on Thanksgiving Day. This year, it sounded like the Puget Sound area would be treated to the same thing. On the day before Thanksgiving, all 78 members of the Southern Resident Community were documented heading east from Victoria and then south towards the Sound. The whales did indeed spend Thanksgiving and the day after traveling around Puget Sound in several groups, but by Saturday we had reports of orcas around the San Juan Islands, too! At first, it sounded like transients. When I heard from a friend they were heading towards Reuben Tarte County Park, I headed out to take a look.

With strong northeast winds, San Juan Channel was solid white caps. I wasn't sure if the whales were still coming or had already past, but I stood out there in sub-freezing temps and high winds scanning for about 15 minutes. Just about the time I couldn't feel my hands anymore, I spotted something that looked more like a whale splash than a white cap. Keeping my eyes trained on the spot, I spotted what I thought was a blow. I was just on my way home from getting groceries, and of course it was one of the rare times I didn't have my camera or binoculars with me, but a few minutes later I was sure. It was definitely orcas!

Once they started making their way north, they passed me by in a hurry. It looked like a group of about half a dozen animals traveling tightly together with an adult male trailing behind them. It was tough to see any saddle patches in the choppy water, but something about them felt more like residents than transients, though with orcas having been spotted in Deer Harbor and Westsound earlier, transients seemed a lot more likely. I didn't see any more coming, however, and was so cold, that I had to give it up after I lost them in the rough seas as they continued north. I heard a little bit later, however, that a second group of about as many animals followed behind them - now I was pretty convinced they were residents! A bit later I got confirmation from another friend who had picked them up - J-Pod and K-Pod!

The unofficial San Juan winter whale watchers were in full alert mode, with everyone giving each other updates as best we could to make sure everyone got a chance to see the whales. When I heard they went west through Spieden Channel, my thoughts immediately went to taking the boat out. I was afraid it was too windy after the water conditions I saw at Reuben Tarte, but I went to look on the west side and was pleasantly surprised by how calm it was - the wind was coming from the opposite side of San Juan Island.

The timing ended up working out perfectly for a visiting friend of mine and I to jump out and pick up K-Pod just off Henry Island before sunset.

Found 'em! Orcas hugging the shoreline of Henry Island

By this point, J-Pod had disappeared somewhere, perhaps having gone north. We had all of K-Pod traveling together in two large groups.

K21 Cappuccino on the left

The boat is so low to the water that I've actually had a bit of a hard time getting my photos in focus! The lighting was so pretty, though, that I just snapped away and hoped for the best, and did get a few to turn out!

My favorite shot of the short encounter!

K26 Lobo

All too soon, the sun went down. The light changed quickly and, already cold, it suddenly got a lot colder!

K26 Lobo and K44 Ripple

We let them pass us by and then headed back to port. It was short, but especially this time of year, so sweet!

Sept 28: Spectacular Sunday

On Sunday, September 28th I had the chance to go out with Legacy Charters, and the weather couldn't have been better. It was sunny, fairly warm, calm - and days like that are at a premium this time of year! And best of all, we left the dock with multiple whale reports.

First we headed up to Spieden Channel where a humpback whale has been hanging out for several days. This is BCY0409, also known as Yogi.

At first it seemed to be doing the "regular" humpback thing, of surfacing several times, then fluking and going down for a longer dive.

I knew this whale was known for being pretty active, but I still wasn't prepared when about two minutes into one of its dives it instead did a full body breach out of the water! My camera wasn't ready, and nor was anyone else's, but I have a perfect image in my mind of turning my head and seeing the whale completely airborn with the sun hitting it perfectly. I'm just sorry I can't share it with you! But he/she remained more active after that, doing a little bit of a surface lunge....

...and then tail-thrashing like crazy!

Here was one huge headstand/tail wave:

We got to see Yogi do one more nice set of surfacings and a dive in front of Spieden Island before moving on....because, after all, this was just the opening act!

Next we cruised down the west side of San Juan Island to where J-Pod (and three K-Pod whales) were hanging out. They had been doing the "west side shuffle" throughout the day, and we ended up meeting up with them off the south end near Salmon Bank. While the morning fog had thankfully mostly burned off by this point, we found ourselves in a thick patch of it as we came upon the whales!

When we arrived on scene, the whales seemed a little undecided as to which direction they were going to go. It was pretty cool to just sit there in such an ephemeral setting with whales basically in all directions, going all different directions! The lighting was spectacular because it was both sunny and foggy at the same time. J22 Oreo and her oldest son J34 Doublestuf came across our bow:

J22 Oreo and J34 Doublestuf

J22 Oreo and J34 Doublestuf

It was also my first good look at K21 Cappuccino in a while!

K21 Cappuccino

Right before we had gotten on scene, the two separate J-Pod groups had met up with each other. After the milling about we saw, it seemed like they finally decided to group up and head north. As always, it was so cool to see so many whales all together!

That's J28 Polaris front and center

J26 Mike

While they were clearly traveling, they were a bit active, too!

J46 Star (left) and J47 Notch (right)

We were so close to Whale Rocks, Captain Spencer just had to take us over to see these charismatic "Grizzlies of the sea" - Steller Sea Lions. I love these guys!

Then as we cruised back north to Snug Harbor, we went right by the orcas again and got one more look.

From left to right J16 Slick, J42 Echo, and J28 Polaris

From left to right J14 Samish, J28 Polaris, and J42 Echo

This time of year, when we don't know how much longer the whales will stick around, every encounter takes on a little extra meaning. These moments will have to tide us "orcaholics" over a mostly whale-less winter. This special afternoon was certainly a memorable one, and will be a fitting grand finale if that's what it ends up being (though I hope I've got another month of whales, of course)!

One more shot from the trip home, showing where I do most of my whale-watching - Lime Kiln Lighthouse. It's always fun to see it from the water-side!