August 22nd: The L54s Arrive!

On the evening of August 21st I had heard a lot of whales were inbound, so I made it an early morning on the west side of San Juan Island. At first only three or four whales came up as far as Land Bank and were milling around, but after they decided to go north it became apparent a lot more whales were coming. They passed by quickly in huge groups - there were so many whales I knew we had members of all three pods, but they passed so fast I wasn't sure who exactly was here.

The J16s were one of the closer groups to shore. I realized I didn't post any pictures of J36 Alki and J52 in my last blog post with the J16s, so here are two pictures to make up for that:

J36 Alki and J52

J36 Alki and J52

I also saw the J22s - always nice to see this trio, known as "The Cookies":

From left to right: J34 Doublestuf, J38 Cookie, and J22 Oreo

It was too tempting not to jump in the boat and catch up with these guys again further north, so I picked up a friend and off we went. Our timing was perfect. We got to Open Bay right when a huge group containing most of J- and K-Pods did. They weren't quite synchronized in their surfacings though, so my photos don't really capture how many whales were there!

That's J2 Ganny in the center

You can't quite see it in this small version of the photo, but the people on this boat are fully in awe of this huge spyhop by J31 Tsuchi. One person is clapping their hands together and all four have their mouths open:

Beauty of a spyhop by J31 Tsuchi

We've gotten in the habit of talking about Js and Ks and not even bothering to mention what is now a given: that L87 Onyx is there. After losing his mother, he continues to be an L-Pod transplant, the only time something like this has been witnessed in the 40 years these whales have been carefully studied.

L87 Onyx, at home with the Js and Ks

After this group passed, we hung out off Kellett Bluff to watch two more groups approaching. The first group contained what I've taken to calling the Greater L4s - a large part of L-Pod that doesn't include the L12 or L54 sub-groups. But there were still a few more whales coming. Were these the L12s? Something didn't quite match up....

L88 Wavewalker and L84 Nyssa

It took me a minute to believe my eyes when I saw these big boys, and not just because they've both grown since last year - it was L84 Nyssa and L88 Wavewalker! These two males, the last remnants of the L9 and L2 matrilines respectively, have hooked up with each other and with the rogue L54 matriline that rarely visits inland waters. While all the whales in this sub-group had been accounted for in the Strait of Juan de Fuca earlier in the season, August 22nd marked the first day of 2015 where they made it all the way into Haro Strait. Last year I only saw them once.

L88 Wavewalker by the Center for Whale Research boat

I only realized this later, but I thought L54 Ino got major style points for waiting to show up in any of our Orca Behavior Institute research until encounter #54.

L54 Ino

The lighting wasn't the greatest, but it was still a great pleasure to spend time with this family group, the most unfamiliar to me of all the Southern Residents. In addition to L88 Wavewalker, L84 Nyssa, and L54 Ino and her two offspring, I found it really interesting that the two whales traveling with them were the L26s, the other smallest remaining L-Pod matriline made up of L92 Crewser and L90 Ballena. These seven whales represent all that remains of four different matrilines, but they've banded together in a makeshift family of their own.

L84 Nyssa and L92 Crewser

In general the Southern Residents are seen so much it doesn't take us long to determine a whale's gender, even though as juveniles that requires seeing the underbelly of the whale, and knowning whose underbelling you're seeing. The one exception is L117 Keta - we still don't know if this whale is male or female. Fingers crossed for female, because L-Pod has a real lack of young females, and if it's a male, there's a likelihood the L54 matriline will end.

L54 Ino and her youngest, L117 Keta

After a time these whales merged with the rest of L-Pod. As we left them they were still heading north along the shoreline of Stuart Island.

It turns out almost everyone was here. Only the L12 sub-group was missing. That meant there were 71 whales present - not bad! But we were still waiting for our first full-fledged superpod of the summer...

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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Ks, Ls, and an Electrical Storm

On this overcast morning we set off for our first trip on the day on the Western Prince with a charter from the St. Mary's Marine Science School from Australia. We didn't have a whale report when we left the dock, but since the whales headed north last night we figured they would be picked up soon. Sure enough, we were not far from the harbor when we heard there were whales heading south in Rosario Strait.

It was a bit of a foggy morning, and if its not totally socked in I love to see the islands in the fog:

We picked up a small group of whales and as we hung out watching them they seemed indecisive as to which way to go. It sounded like the large group of whales had split and were taking different channels south. The group we were with was just off the north end of Cypress Island, and kept moving back and forth along the shoreline, at one point stopping to play in a kelp bed and surface with fronds draped over their dorsal fins and tails. Finally, they decided to head south down the east side of the island, and that's when we got a close enough look at a few of them to determine that K21 Cappuccino and his sister K40 Raggedy were in the group. Viewing the orcas in Rosario Strait is one of the most beautiful places in the islands to see them:

For this afternoon's public trip we headed south to meet up with the whales again off the west side of Lopez Island. The L2 family group was leading the way, and we saw L2 Grace with her sons L78 Gaia and L88 Wavewalker. Regular blog readers may remember that a couple of Sundays ago we had a close encounter with Wavewalker...well the same thing happened again this Sunday! We were paralleling along side of him when all of a sudden he veered closer and gave us a nice look at his left side:

A little later we were viewing K11 Georgia, who is the oldest female in K-Pod at an estimated age of 76, and L87 Onyx, who spends most of his time with K11 and family since his mother died a few years ago. While we were watching the two of them, Wavewalker snuck up behind us again and this time passed showing us his right side. I just happened to have the camera pointed in the right place at the right time when he appeared and got this cool sequence of shots of him surfacing:

After Wavewalker passed us by, we saw some more of K11's family group, including her son K25 Scoter, her daughter K20 Spock, and her grandson K38 Comet. It's really great to see Spock and Comet traveling with the rest of their pod again, as a month ago was that strange incident where they were the only two resident whales in the area, separate from the rest of their family, which is something I had never seen before.

The other strange thing that happened today is we got caught in an electrical storm. We don't get many thunderstorms out here, but we had some rain and thunder last night with the prediction for potentially more this evening. I can't call what we experienced today a thunderstorm, however, because while it was raining there was no thunder or lightning. The first thing we experienced was one of our passengers getting a strong electric shock from one of the hand rails. Then someone noticed that everyone's hair was standing straight up, like it does with any type of static electricity. When the antenna on top of the boat started buzzing we knew something weird was really going on. Captain Hobbes had us all go either inside or under the cover of the back seating area and turned off all the ship's electronics. Thankfully, it passed within a few minutes and no lightning strikes were seen, but it was a very bizarre (and a little scary) thing to witness!

Western Prince Trip - L2s in Haro Strait

Today I was out on the Western Prince. This morning members of all three pods had been in the area, and they had started traveling north towards the edge of our range. Luckily, we had reports of a small group of L-Pod whales that was still on the west side of San Juan Island. It turns out it was the L2s - mother L2 Grace and her two sons L78 Gaia and L88 Wavewalker. I only saw 3 whales myself, but others said there were four, with the fourth perhaps being L87 Onyx.

When we first got on scene the whales were right up along the shoreline several hundred yards inshore of us. They were swimming slowly south and taking long dives. Suddenly, they veered straight offshore towards us. We backed out of their way, then cut our engines as they dove down again. We waited...and waited...unsure of where they would come up next. While L2 and L78 had headed back inshore, we were surprised when L88 Wavewalker, a 16 year old male, surfaced about 75 yards off our stern! He then proceeded to swim right along the port side of the boat, surfacing once right alongside the boat.

It is absolutely one of the coolest things to be able to see a whale swimming underwater. Usually you can just make out the white markings on the whale, which stand out better against the dark water background. From a photographer's perspective it's nice, too, because you can see right where the whale is going to come up! Check out this sequence of photos of Wavewalker surfacing. The third and fourth ones are full frame shots, that's how close he was!