August 20th: A Whale of a Day With All Three Pods

On the evening of August 19th, after a day with no whales in the area, we heard about a large group of residents heading in from out west. With hopes of perhaps our first real superpod of the season, we headed out to the west side on the morning of August 20th with word of whales heading up towards Lime Kiln. The first marine mammal sighting of the day, however, wasn't an orca but this harbor seal pup in the kelp:

With the potential for all the whales to be in the area and no idea at all who's out there, it always takes a bit to figure out just who we're looking at. The whales being all mixed up makes it a little bit harder, too! The first whales we saw were some members of the K13s with some members of the L47s.

K25 Scoter and L47 Marina

If you were surprised like I was to not have J2 Granny in the lead group as usual, turns out that's just because she was so far in the lead she passed Lime Kiln before sun-up. I heard later that Granny's group of J-Pod was way up in Swanson Channel already with the L4s at this time.

The mixed group of Ks and Ls hung out for a long while in front of Lime Kiln, apparently actively foraging. They were spread out, but we saw lots of surface activity, including some impressive lunges as they presumably pursued a salmon.

Awesome surface lunge by K13 Skagit

Even though they weren't as close to shore as a couple days ago, the morning light was again awesome for seeing photographing all their surface behavior.

Tail slap by K25 Scoter

As a few more whales came north to join the group, they all converged and were zipping around in tight groups. They don't really cooperatively hunt for salmon as far as we know, but it sure looked like the feeding was good in that spot for everyone!

An odd combo: K20 Spock and baby L122

A couple of foraging whales zoomed past this boat (who had cut their engines - the whales approached them), wowing the people on the board. I particularly love the look of disbelief from the woman on the left as she experiences a moment she'll never forget! The girls on top look pretty thrilled, too.

K27 Deadhead and another whale thrill these onlookers

The photos didn't really capture the excitement of the foraging whales, but we had our hydrophone in the water, and the vocalizations sure did. Check out a clip of what we heard here. 

After a time this group of whales continued north, and next to pass us were K38 Comet and K34 Cali to complete the K13 family group.

K38 Comet heading north to catch up with the rest of his family

Next came some more L-Pod whales, including a couple I haven't seen much of at all this year, like L72 Racer and L105 Fluke!

L105 Fluke - who has grown so much since last year that I had to do a double take when I saw him!

After a few more Ls went by, we thought that was probably it, as no other whales were in sight to the south. Perhaps all the whales that were coming in the night before hadn't stayed? We headed home to have a late breakfast, and then heard from a friend that other whales were heading towards the south end of San Juan Island from offshore! We headed back out to the west side, but the only whales that made it north past Lime Kiln were the J16s - all the other Js, Ks, and Ls stayed near False Bay or further south.

J16 Slick and J50 Scarlet make a mid-afternoon pass by Lime Kiln

In the evening, the seas remained flat calm as they had all day, so after an early dinner we decided to head out on the boat to see if we could meet up with the whales off False Bay. Surprisingly, we ended up finding whales right near Open Bay! The J16s were on their way back south. But even more surprisingly, they weren't alone! I had seen all the members of the J16s when we spotted another male offshore. I took a photo to figure out who it was, and you should have heard my excitement when I realized it was L84 Nyssa, a member of the greater L54 sub-group of L-Pod who don't generally spend much time here at all.

You wouldn't think this average photo would cause so much excitement, but....L84 NYSSA!!!

After he passed we swung around to the outside of him to get a better shot of his other side lit up by the evening light.

L84 Nyssa about one and a half miles offshore of San Juan County Park

I figured it was unlikely he would be there without the others in his sub-group, and sure enough we found two more of them. (The other two were apparently well to the south with the other whales - it's a mystery how these guys made it up to the J16s seemingly undetected, though they were so far offshore maybe it's not surprising.) I love getting to spend time with these guys, the members of the Southern Resident Community that I know the least well.

L108 Coho with the Lime Kiln Lighthouse in the distance

We dropped the hydrophone a couple times, and while they were mostly just echolocating we did get a few vocals from L108. He stopped a couple times to actively forage, and we saw more surface lunges much like we saw from the other group first thing this morning.

I always love abstract whale shots with cool lighting/reflections, so check out this heavily cropped photo of L108 and the water in the amazing evening light:

The tip of the dorsal fin of L108 Coho as he submerges

We saw our first whales of the day around 8 AM and our last whales of the day around 8 PM! By the time it got dark out we were exhausted, but not complaining in the least! We wondered if we would be in for another whale-filled day today, August 21st, but what a difference a day makes. Yesterday there were whales on the west side all day and flat calm seas. Today, no whales nearby, and heavy winds with rough seas! A good time to stay at home and go through all the photos, data, and recordings we collected yesterday!

July 29th: A Perfect Morning with the K13s

Early on July 29th, I got out to Lime Kiln just as the K13 matriline was passing by, heading north all on their own. The lighting was exquisite.

K44 Ripple

The most magical moment was when K20 Spock and her son K38 Comet surfaced in the kelp right off the rocks:

Spock had kelp draped over her dorsal fin for several consecutive surfacings:

In the evening, whales were spread over basically the entire length of San Juan Island, foraging singly and in small groups. With some whales right outside of our harbor, it was too tempting not to go out for a little bit. We mostly hung out with J34 Doublestuf and his mom J22 Oreo, and I finally got a look at his serious new rake marks that I had heard about from others. What kinda trouble did he get himself in to?

J34 Doublestuf with rakes from another orca

There was another private boat out enjoying the whales, a family with three small children. One of the boys was terrified of the orcas, and was begging his dad to drive the boat away. We motored over to them, and I told him how we were watching mama's boy Doublestuf and his mom Oreo, and how they were looking for fish, which is all they eat, and didn't really mind if we were there or not. I'm not sure if he took any of it in or not - though he did stop screaming - but I just couldn't stand the thought of that boy growing up with a fear of whales, when they're creatures that I admire so much.

September 6th: Five Epic Hours of Whales and Wildlife at Lime Kiln

With word the night before that all three pods were inbound from the ocean, I knew I should get out to Lime Kiln early on the morning of Saturday, September 6th. When I got out to the park at about 7:00, it was one of those blissfully peaceful mornings, so calm you can hear the porpoises breathing. I was sitting on the rocks about half an hour after arriving listening to those soft exhalations: Pfft.......Pfft. Suddenly, I heard a different noise. Faint - far away - but distinct. Kawoof! That was no porpoise!

It was pretty magical for me to hear the orcas before I  saw them. After hearing two breaths, I started scanning to the south and spotted a dorsal fin a mile or so away, but heading north towards me! Fighting an ebb tide, it took this first small group of whales a looonnnng time to get to Lime Kiln. When the first one finally arrived, I wasn't too surprised to see it was J2 Granny!

J2 Granny surfaces in the beautiful early morning light off Lime Kiln

Not far behind Granny were J16 Slick and her son J26 Mike. I could see more blows to the south, but very spread out, and when Mike stopped to forage for a while off Lime Kiln it was clear the whales weren't in any hurry to go anywhere. Eventually, over the next two hours, the rest of J-Pod "Group A" came by heading north: the rest of the J16s, the J14s, the J19s, and L87 Onyx:

L87 Onyx - look at that reflection of the dorsal fin!

Whales were visible pretty much all the time, but in the gaps when there weren't any close, there was so much other wildlife to look at it! It was just all around a very photogenic morning.

The first rays of sunlight on Lime Kiln Lighthouse

A belted kingfisher - the best photo I've ever gotten of one in flight!

The harbor seal action was incredible, too. There were at least three seals fishing right off the park throughout the morning, and they caught at least three large fish throughout the morning.

Harbor seal with a fish. He was looking at me with eyes like he thought I might steal it from him! The water looks so gray because this was before the sun really came up over the island - it was early!

Two harbor seals - much nicer lighting after the sun arrived!

A little early morning yoga, harbor seal style!

Once Group A had continued north in their ones and twos, which took until almost 10 AM, I could see a lot of blows all at once off Land Bank to the south. Yesss!! Who could this be? Turns out it was all of Group B (J11s, J17s, J22s) traveling together, most of them right along the shoreline!

Photographer and whales - the best of shore-based whale-watching!

I love this shot because it shows just how close to shore the whales come! When you see them appearing over or around the rocks, you know you're a few moments away from an incredible treat!

Not only were they close, the lighting couldn't have been better! I've spent a lot of early mornings on the west side this summer without seeing anything, but this one panning out made it all worth it!

I've gotten photos of orcas and harbor seals in the same shot when I've been on a boat, but this was the first time I had a chance to take a shot like this from shore! Usually the harbor seals are on the rocks behind the whales, but this time the harbor seal is in the foreground!

The lighting was such that you could see the whales underwater as they swam past, truly one of the most magical experiences. Unfortunately the surface was just a bit too disturbed to get clear underwater photos, but it still led to some neat abstract shots. I really like photos like this, though I've learned over the years that unless you've looked at as many whales and whale photos as I have, it's not always clear what you're seeing! Here's one showing just the head of the whale underwater, and you're seeing the white chin, white eye patch, and the beginning of her exhalation:

Here's the next photo in the sequence to help you better visualize what you're seeing:

Here's another set of three shots where you can see a whale underwater, right before she comes up and surfaces onto the back of the whale in front of her!

Then in this one even I'm not sure of what all is visible in terms of how many whales or which body parts you're seeing, but I like it anyway! I do see the head of one whale in the middle, right above the ripple across the middle of the photo. That whale is "upside down" compared to the ones in the photos above.

Not only was the light amazing for seeing under water, it was perfect above water, too! How about this "rainblow" from J32 Rhapsody?

A beautiful "rainblow" from J32 Rhapsody

Two whales were trailing just a minute or two behind the main group, and all of a sudden they raced by to catch up. It was J28 Polaris and J46 Star.

J28 Polaris

At this time I wasn't even sure if all three pods had made it in, or stayed in for that matter. But when all of Js had gone by, I was still seeing blows to the south, so I knew somebody else was here! About 20 minutes after the Js came the K14s. As is always the case on these epic passbys, as soon as they had passed, the next set of whales was approaching. Following the K14s were the K12s, and then the K13s in three spread out groups of their own. The final two whales to pass were K20 Spock and K38 Comet.

K20 Spock and K38 Comet

When all of Ks had gone by (we're talking about a little over 4 hours of whales slowly passing by at this point), there were still more blows to the south! These whales (they had to be Ls, by the process of elimination, as everyone else but three K-Pod whales had been sen at this point) were milling, and while I waited to see if they would make their way up, the harbor seals continued to entertain.

It looked like the seals were catching salmon:

I'm not sure if these two both saw the same fish at the same time or what, but they proceeded to fight over one good sized fish right in front of me!

The action was happening so fast I was just clicking the shutter with no real idea of what I was capturing, but it was a real treat to go home and look through my pictures later! Here's one seal lunging out of the water right at the other:

And my gem seal shot of the day, one of the seals completely submerged underwater but visible holding a very tattered salmon in his mouth!

In the end, the whales to the south turned and went back south, but I couldn't complain! After five hours and more than five hundred photos at Lime Kiln, it had truly been an epic morning. Ultimately Js and Ks continued north to the Fraser River while the 3 K-Pod whales and all of L-Pod spent their whole day off the southwest side of San Juan Island. Big news came in the afternoon, however, when the Center for Whale Research announced that they had documented a new calf, L120, born to L86 Surprise!

If you've been reading my blog throughout the summer, you've probably heard me mention that J49 Ti'lem I'nges was the last calf born to the Southern Residents - in August of 2012! We had to wait an astonishing 25 months to welcome the next new member to the population. While we were all beyond thrilled to hear about this new little one's arrival, the long drought with no babies is certainly a cause for concern. The very latest research from the Conservation Canine crew (the folks that use scat-detection dogs to  collect killer whale fecal samples for some pretty cutting edge hormone analysis) is that it looks like the whales are getting pregnant, but seem to be miscarrying, perhaps due to nutritional stress. It goes back to the very same core message: no fish, no blackfish.

The arrival of this little one was also a little bittersweet because of the family group he/she was born in to. The last whale born to L86 Surprise! (yes the exclamation point is officially part of the name) met an unfortunate fate. You can read about L112 Sooke on one of my previous blog posts here.

But I don't mean to digress too far into the sad side of things - the arrival of L120 was a very happy day! So happy that I got tears in my eyes when I heard the news. It would take a few days until I would have the opportunity to meet L120 for myself, but I would get a chance to see him/her before too long!! Stay tuned for those photos - you won't believe how small a 6 foot long, 400 pound cetacean can look!

Superpod Sunday

All the Chinook salmon reports for the inland waters of Washington and British Columbia have not been good this year, which is not good news for our resident killer whales. All three Southern Resident pods have been traveling together lately, and for most of this month they've only been make brief appearances near San Juan Island, usually for less than a day, before heading back out the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Hopefully they're finding fish somewhere - when we have seen them, they've looked pretty fat and happy as far as I can tell - but that means resident orca sightings in August have been pretty low here in the Salish Sea.

Last night, I heard the whales were all heading east through the Strait, but when I thought of heading out to the west side early this morning, I guessed the whales were probably going to be heading west again. I guessed wrong! Luckily, my friend Katie gave me a head's up this morning, and I think I made it out the door in record time.

When I got to Land Bank, most of the superpod had already gone north, but I got to see the last big group of whales pass through. The first whale I saw was J26 Mike, the adult male in the photo below, and some other J-Pod whales including J16 Slick and J27 Mike. This looks like a black and white photo, but it isn't!

On the next surfacing I saw some L-Pod whales, which made it apparent the groups were all mixed up. It's always fun in these situations to see who is traveling with whom.

From left to right: L92 Crewser, L95 Nigel, L105 Fluke, L72 Racer

In addition to the whales in the photos above, also present in this trailing group were the rest of the L26s (L26 and L90) and the L47s (L47, L83, L91, L110, and L115).

L92 Crewser and his mom L26 Baba

Figuring there were lots of whales up ahead of these guys, I went up to San Juan County Park where indeed large groups of active whales were heading north well offshore. It's hard to capture in a photo the sight of so many whales surfacing one right after the other, but here are a few shots that try to give a sense of what it was like:

It was nice to see the whales early enough that there were no whale-watching boats around them, but Haro Strait is a busy place any time of day or night. These big freighters are always passing through, and I can only imagine what it's like for the whales to have to listen to them as much as they do. Kind of hard to see the whale in this small version, so you can click for a larger view:

It looked like the whales were going to continue north, so I headed back to town, but about an hour later I heard the whales had flipped and were coming back south. I was hoping they would stick around long enough to make a trip up the Fraser River, but I guess they decided there weren't enough salmon to go check it out. So it was back to the west side in a rush for the second time this morning, this time to Lime Kiln Point State Park.

Keith decided to come with me this time, and when we arrived, there were whale watch boats visible in the distance to the north. We settled down for what turned out to be a pretty breezy, chilly wait, but there were interesting things to look at in the meantime like this pair of immature oystercatchers (notice the black on the ends of their otherwise red bills - again click for a larger view):

The first three whales to pass by were K21 Cappuccino, K16 Opus, and K36 Sonata. Noticeably absent was Cappuccino's sister K40 Raggedy. The two are normally inseparable, so I don't have a good feeling about her whereabouts. At least Cappuccino seems to have another little family group to travel with, so he's not completely alone.

K21 Cappuccino (right)

For a moment it looked like these would be the only whales to head south, where apparently the L12 sub-group was slowly heading north to meet them. (The L12s were apparently the only whales not to go north this morning. It sounded like all the other whales were there, with the exception of maybe the L2s and L54s who I didn't hear anything about.) All the whales to the north were milling about in indecision, but then the rest of K-Pod decided to follow Cappuccino and the others. It was a nice little who's-who of K-Pod, with all the whales passing by in their family groups, giving me a chance to ID every whale in the pod as they went by without needing photos - something I haven't done in quite a while! Of course I still took photos though....

K12 Sequim

K22 Sekiu and her son K33 Tika, now a sprouter male at age 11

Sequim's youngest two offspring: K37 Rainshadow (right) and K43 Saturna (age 2- center)

After the K12s came the K14s, and then the K13s followed up a little behind that.

K20 Spock and K38 Comet

 It was nice to get a good look at the youngest member of K-Pod, calf K44, who will get his name next month now that he's survived a full year.

K25 Scoter, a 21 year-old male, has long been thought of as a bit of a runt as far as adult males go, since his dorsal fin has remained so short. It seems like he may just be a late bloomer, however, as it sure looked to me like his fin had started to grow a little bit. It's hard to tell here with no other whales to compare him to, though:

As Ks continued south, there was another huge group of whales visible offshore to the north, presumably the rest of L-Pod and all of J-Pod. It didn't look good for them sticking around for long, as they were several miles offshore and heading southwest, looking a lot like they were going to go right past Discovery Island and back out the Strait. I guess we'll have to wait and see! Wherever they go, I hope they're finding enough to eat!

California gull

To end with, a quick note about the year list which has reactivated after almost two months of no new species added. On a boat ride through San Juan Channel last weekend I saw my first few Bonaparte's gulls (211) of the year, and then yesterday at Fourth of July Beach I saw my first western sandpipers (212) of the year. I have no idea how western sandpiper fell all the way to #212, other than that I'm sure some of the unidentifiable peeps I've seen this year were probably westerns, but that wasn't good enough to count them until now, when I got a good look for sure. Hard to believe, now that we've finally been getting a nice stretch of summery weather, that the fall migration is well underway, but I also saw my first huge flocks of scoters and horned grebes yesterday! Autumn is right around the corner, but here's to hoping for some more good whale sightings before the season is done.