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!

An Epic Whale of a Day

As we head towards fall, there are probably only a couple more weeks of consistent whale sightings before they move on to look for fish in other waters. I felt in need of what I call a "whale fix" since it has been a while since I've had one of those special encounters with them, so I went for a ride-along today on the Western Prince. It seems like most of September has been foggy, rainy, and/or windy, but today was an absolutely perfect day for being out on the water. Here's a photo I took off the back of the boat as we were cruising north in San Juan Channel:

On our way north we stopped to look at a nice group of maybe 20 or so harbor porpoises, and we also saw lots of harbor seals in the water. Another unexpected bird sighting was a pair of western grebes. one of the local seabird species that have experienced the greatest declines in recent years.

We met up with the whales just off of Turn Point on Stuart Island, right where Boundary Pass and Haro Strait come together. Captain Hobbes dropped the hydrophone in the water and immediately we heard several loud S19 calls and a couple of S18s, which told me it was L-Pod approaching us. (The Southern Resident killer whales have a shared dialect of 27 or so tonal discrete calls that are their primary social vocalizations. Even though they share calls, each pod has its own unique dialect including a couple of signature calls, so a trained ear can determine which pod or pods are present just by the vocalizations. I was a research intern focusing on orca bioacoustic and also did my undergraduate senior thesis on Southern Resident vocalizations, so I know the calls pretty well.)

As they rounded Turn Point the whales fanned out, meaning before long there were whales every direction we looked. The first two we got a good look at were L72 Racer and her youngest son L105 Fluke, and they passed us right off the bow:

L72 Racer

L105 Fluke

The whales were active and we saw just about every behavior including spyhops, breaches, dorsal fin slaps, pec slaps, and of course tail slaps and cartwheels:

Then, a big freighter came through. The whales definitely heard it coming from miles away, but a group of them were hanging out right in front of the path of the ship. That got us to wondering if they might be interested in surfing the freighter wake, something I've only ever seen once before. Sure enough, just after the freighter passed we saw several whales sharking and porpoising in the waves behind the ship. It's kind of hard to see the swells in the photo, but there must have been some massive water motion they were playing in:

The L-Pod whales started to make their way south down Haro Strait, but we could see a lot more whales behind them still in Boundary Pass. We motored north a little ways to take a look at that group. Some of them stayed far away and eventually ended up going back north up Swanson Channel (J-Pod?), but the next group that headed south towards us was a big group of K-Pod whales. They didn't seem in as playful a mood as the Ls, but were definitely interested in foraging the tide rips as they were circling around and just hanging out in one spot. One whale in this group was K37 Rainshadow, who circled around us several times. Here's Rainshadow with the Turn Point lighthouse in the background:

We were just stopped in the water but it was difficult to know which way to look as the whales were circling in all directions. Some animals were apparently resting as they were logging at the surface, but we saw many lunging at the surface which often indicates they're in pursuit of a fish, like this whale maybe was:

We saw a big male heading towards us, and as he got closer we were able to identify him as K25 Scoter:

Then, something happened that I have never seen before. Scoter started swimming closer to the boat, so we could see him underwater. As he got nearer to the surface, it became apparent that he was carrying a fish in his mouth!!! When he came up to breathe we could actually clearly see his teeth and the fish he was holding...

Needless to say, I was ecstatic to see this, let alone get photos of it! What an amazing experience.

But we weren't done yet. Another young whale started getting playful and gave a couple of half breaches while its family continued to forage:

Then it was time to go, but we had trouble leaving because there were so many whales spread out everywhere. Before we left we got one more close pass from K35 Sonata. I cropped this picture in to show just the front of the whales, because I thought the water at the front of his rostrum looked so cool:

You would think after an amazing trip like this (probably my best of the season) I would have had enough whales, but of course I hadn't. Instead of going home for dinner I went out to the westide of the island to watch the sunset and see if some whales might be heading down that way. Sure enough, as it began to get dark, five whales came into view. They were well offshore, but their blows echoed across the strait and their dorsal fins were silhouetted against the golden waters. It was a peaceful ending to an exciting day.

K-Pod off False Bay and Red-necked Phalaropes

Yesterday was sunny and warm, but today it felt much more like fall - overcast and chilly. As we headed down San Juan Channel aboard the Western Prince there were lots of birds to check out: a pair of bald eagles up in a tree, a great blue heron perched on a kelp bed, and on Goose Island double-crested cormorants, pelagic cormorants, glaucous-winged gulls, and Heermann's gulls.

Reports were that all three pods were in the area, but they were very spread out in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We met up with K-Pod as they were headed back towards False Bay on San Juan Island. The first group of whales we came across included brother K21 Cappuccino (right) and sister K40 Raggedy (left):

They were traveling with two other whales and it took me a little bit to determine it was K16 Opus and her seven year-old son K35 Sonata. Here is Sonata surfacing behind Raggedy. You can see better in this photo the nicks along her dorsal fin that are her namesake:

Over the rest of the afternoon we saw most of the K-Pod family groups. One of the last groups we looked at included K14 Lea and her one-year-old calf K42, who is going to be named at the end of this month. You have until August 31st to get your vote in for what to name the baby.

There were some other bird watchers on board who were just as excited as I was to get a nice look at some red-necked phalaropes. There have been lots of small flocks flying around over the last few weeks as they pass through on their fall migration, but today was the first time I've had a chance to snap some photos of a few of them on the surface of the water. They're really cool birds that spin around on the surface of the water to create their own little upwelling to bring nutrients up to within reach, then they grab little organic particles out of the water to eat. You can see they're already decked out in winter plumage, another sure sign that fall is just around the corner:

Superpod in Georgia Strait

This afternoon on the Western Explorer we headed through the beautiful Canadian Gulf Islands up to the north side of Active Pass in the southern Strait of Georgia where we met up with a superpod (members of all three pods) that had made amazing time booking it north all morning. All the whales except the L5 and L54 matrilines (7 whales) were there, but they were spread out over 5+ miles. Still, we did see whales from J-Pod, K-Pod, and L-Pod.

We got a nice look at the L2 matriline, made up of mom L2 Grace and her two boys L78 Gaia and L88 Wavewalker. From left to right in the photo below is L88, L2, and L78:

About a month ago L78 showed up with some pretty serious rake marks along the front edge of his dorsal fin. They appear to be from another orca. We see rake marks on whales pretty often - probably a result of rough-housing and or disciplining - but I have never seen rake marks as deep or extensive as those Gaia returned with. There has been a lot of speculation as to what he might have done to "deserve" this from another whale....the most interesting theory I've heard is that just before he returned with the rake marks, he and the rest of L-Pod were in an area where some offshore orcas (a completely separate population) were seen. Maybe there was a rough encounter between the two different cultures of orcas that, as far as we know, rarely interact with each other?

The good news is today I was able to tell that Gaia's rake marks are healing nicely. On the left side is a photo of the rake marks on his left side back on July 12th. The rake marks looked similarly severe on both sides, so you can see on the photo on the right how much they have healed based on a photo from today, where the marks are fading. As always, click on a photo to get a larger view:

There was another family group of whales traveling with the L2 matriline, and while I wasn't able to determine who they were in person, from my photos I was able to see it was J27 Blackberry and his two younger siblings J31 Tsuchi and J39 Mako. This is interesting because at the time we were under the impression all of J-Pod was up ahead about five miles, so I guess in reality the whales were "all mixed up"! Here is male J27 on the left and male L78 Gaia on the right:

The last group coming out of Active Pass was K-Pod, and our last look of the day was of a group of four K-Pod whales traveling off separate from the rest of the pod. The left two whales are 46 year-old female K40 Raggedy and her 23 year-old brother K21 Cappuccino. The right two whales are 24 year-old female K16 Opus and her 7 year-old son K35 Sonata:

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