End of August Check-In

As this unconventional year has gone on, the motivation to blog has been low, even though spending time in nature and the outdoors has been my greatest solace. This has been my longest hiatus ever from blogging, but I've still been doing a lot of photography and do miss having an outlet to share my photos! So here's an attempt at getting back to it again.

While July was an incredible month (read: like "normal" aka the old days) when we had visits from all three Southern Resident pods including a two-week stay by J-Pod. August, by contrast, has been very quiet on the whale front for us, with just a single brief shore-based encounter a few days ago. But we've still gotten out on the water a few times and have also been doing a lot of bird-watching, especially looking for shore birds, on land.

On August 16, with my parents visiting, we headed out on the water with Maya's Legacy on a trip that will be one of the highlights of the summer. It was a hot afternoon (so extra nice to be on the water with the cooling breeze) and the sky-blue waters were like glass. We saw two humpback whales: Two Spot (CS631) in San Juan Channel and Valiant (BCX1068 calf 2017) at Salmon Bank.

Two Spot in San Juan Channel

Valiant, missing a couple chunks out of his very scraped-up flukes, survived an encounter with killer whales when less than a year old. This whale is also known to be the calf of BCX1068 Split Fluke, who is in turn the offspring of BCY0160 Heather, whales known to migrate to Mexico. It's pretty awesome that we are getting to know the life histories of Salish Sea humpbacks to this extent!

The distinctive flukes of Valiant with the Salmon Bank marker in the background

Next we were lucky enough to get to head out to Smith and Minor Islands, which I've only been able to visit a handful of times. They're offshore due south of Lopez Island and offer amazing wildlife viewing both on their shorelines and in the extensive kelp bed that surround them. One of the main highlights there are the tufted puffins, which nest in burrows on Smith Island. There have been higher numbers of them there this year; in the past, there may only be one or two pairs seen, but on our visit, we saw more than a dozen tufted puffins, though we weren't able to spot the lone horned puffin that has also been hanging out there.

I'm not sure I've ever even circumnavigated Minor Island, where a long sand spit offers a haul out for harbor seals:

Back on land, as I mentioned, we've been scouting out shorebirds in particular. As fun as that has been, it's hard to believe the reason we're seeing them is because fall migration has already begun! Time, this year more so than any other, has been so bizarre in how at times it has been passing so slowly and in others so quickly. In any case, we've been having a lot of luck turning up a nice variety of migrating species!

Least sandpiper at Third Lagoon

Least sandpiper at False Bay

Sanderling at South Beach

Semipalmated plover at Jackson Beach

Western sandpiper at South Beach

While there have still been a lot of orcas in the Salish Sea in August, we're looking at the likelihood of the first August on record without the Southern Residents here, as it has been all Bigg's killer whales. While I've been tracking their movements (and many interesting social groupings and family splits) from afar, my only encounter with them was on August 26 when we saw the T46s and two of the T137s pass Reuben Tarte County Park. It was short, but sweet, and the way this year has gone, I was thankful just to see some dorsal fins.

T46E Thor and T137B Tempest off Reuben Tarte

At the very least, the weather has continued to be amazing, so we've been going out for walks a lot in the mornings and/or evenings when it's a little less hot, and yesterday were successful in locating several species we had been trying to find all week:

Lesser yellowlegs at Jackson Beach - the 200th bird species I've ever seen in San Juan County!

Short-billed dowitcher at Jackson Beach

Long-billed dowitcher at Jackson Beach

This morning, we decided to take our boat out as well to bird San Juan Channel, and again the conditions were perfect.

A pair of marbled murrelets in Griffin Bay

Right at the end we found our target species, too: a dozen red-necked phalaropes.

Red-necked phalarope

While this year has ended up looking very different than originally anticipated, I've been continuing on with our photo year list challenge, which this year expanded from birds to focus on any vertebrate. The red-necked phalarope was species #175 for the year, not too shabby considering we've been exclusively San Juan Island based since March! We'll see if I can still sneak up to my target of 200 by the end of the year, and I'll also see if I can back to at least a semi-regular habit of blogging!

June: A Month Full of Bigg's Killer Whale Encounters

It still feels very surreal that we've just had our first June on record with no Southern Resident killer whales in inland waters. June used to be a highlight of the year because of the abundance of sightings of all three pods on the west side of San Juan Island. Yet here we are, 58 days without any of them in the Salish Sea. The silence created by their absence is deafening.

It's been an interesting process to hold on to that loss and that grief while simultaneously celebrating and reveling in the mammal-eating transient or Bigg's killer whales, which continue to set records year after year for their presence in the inland waters. It's equally bizarre to think I was here for years before I ever met any of them, and now I'm beginning to know them as families and individuals, too. The encounters I've head with them over the last month or so have been awesome - though there have been multiple occasions where I've had an unexpected moment of heartache when I think to myself, "The Southern Residents used to do this": a large group of whales swimming spread out up Swanson Channel. An early morning report of vocals on the Lime Kiln hydrophone and a surprise close pass of a tail-slapping whale through the kelp. Getting off work and watching two mothers with calves round Edwards Point and swim past Land Bank. I never thought I would see Bigg's killer whales doing those things.

I've been negligent in posting my sightings and photos here, so this post will serve as a quick recap to share a few memorable moments leading up to my next installment about an encounter that deserves its own post.

June 6 - The T65Bs and T137s in San Juan Channel

June 11 - The T49As in Wasp Passage

Having our boat in a new location this year has meant whale encounters in new locations, and Wasp Passage between Orcas and Shaw Islands has quickly become a new favorite spot to see whales.

We even got to see the T49As go through narrow Pole Pass, a channel between Orcas and Crane Islands about 250 feet across and 12 feet deep at low tide. Fun fact: apparently it's so named because, as the story goes, Native Americans would stretch fish nets on poles across the pass to catch migratory waterfowl.

June 12 - The T123s pass Friday Harbor

I lucked out with a close surfacing by the whole family from my shore-based perch.

June 20 - The T46s and T46Bs in Swanson Channel

On this truly memorable evening we headed out with some friends aboard a Maya's Legacy trip out of Snug Harbor. While there was another whale report in the area, we stopped to scan where an additional group of whales had briefly been spotted a short time before. We stopped several times and looked in all directions, but didn't see or hear anything. Then our captain caught sight of a fin 2 miles away, and it turned out to be a group of 13 whales that had gone undetected all day!

The two family groups were the T46s and T46Bs, such a storied group they deserve a longer treatment at some point, but this day it was all about getting to meet T46B1B, a little calf nicknamed Tl'uk ("Moon" in the Bella Coola Coast Salish language) who has made headlines for his very pale appearance.

He had periodically been around for a couple of weeks, but it was my first time meeting him, and I was very excited! We can't say for sure what is causing him to look so light. He's not albino (he doesn't have red eyes), but other conditions are difficult to assess without genetic sampling. Some are calling him leucistic (a condition that prevents pigments from functioning properly), but it's also possible he has another genetic condition called Chédiak–Higashi syndrome. Some whales who have looked this way haven't lived very long, while others have darkened up with age. One thing that's really striking about this little guy is just how different he looks in various lighting conditions - sometimes almost white, and other times just a shade of dark gray instead of black!

We left them heading up Trincomali Channel (my first time in this waterway!) and were treating to a stunning sunset on the way home.

June 21 - The T75Bs and T75Cs at Land Bank

June 21 - T124C at Land Bank

June 23 - The T46Bs and T77A on the west side of San Juan Island

Following this last one I would go a week before having another whale sighting, but it turned out to be well worth the wait! Stay tuned....

It's T Time!

As we get into March and April, we hopefully anticipate whale sightings to start increasing. In years past, this is the time the residents start to spend more time around the San Juans, and in more recent years with the residents elsewhere it has been a time of abundant transient sightings. So far, March is shaping up to be a transient kinda month!

On Thursday, March 5th, I heard a group of transients was out in the middle of Haro Strait. It was too tempting not to take a long lunch break to go investigate! We met up with the T18s near Kelp Reef. T18 Esperanza was nearby but off on her own, while T19 Mooyah was traveling with her two sons T19B Galiano and T19C Spouter. (This group is among the transients named by the Vancouver Aquarium.)

From left to right: T19B, T19C, and T19

They were swimming in circles, intermittently fanning out and then joining up again. That unpredictable surface behavior combined with long dive times led to this unexpected close surfacing by T19B. I've seen this whale a decent amount over the years, and he's definitely grown up, because our little boat felt downright tiny as he approached!

T19B Galiano

T19C, meanwhile, was sporting some pretty serious battle scars on one side of his dorsal fin:

Because I had to get back to work, we just had a short jaunt out on the 5th, though I heard later on that these whales met up with the T60s and T2B.

On Saturday, March 7th, the weather was just to beautiful to not get on the water again. I wanted to wait until the afternoon, hopeful that whales would show up....and they did! Around mid-day I heard about another group of transients on the west side of San Juan Island. Several of us met up and took out Serenity, and we came across the first whales just slightly south of our home port. The first whales we saw were T137A and T137B; we knew their other two family members had to be around somewhere. When these two whales went IN to Open Bay and gulls started circling overhead, we assumed they had made a kill, and this seemingly attracted mom T137 and the youngest, three year-old T137C.

T137 (age 32) and T137C (age 3)

T137A (age 13) and T137B (age 9)

Eventually the whales came out of the bay and rounded Henry Island. Near Battleship Island we saw harbor porpoise speeding right towards us....away from the whales. Sure enough, they made another kill here, of a harbor porpoise. All the whales were circling and converging, undoubtedly prey sharing.

T137, T137A, and T137 B converge and feed together

What happened next was something I've never seen before. One of the whales (I later determined it was T137A) spyhopped, shaking its head back and forth (in head-banging fashion) with a piece of meat in its mouth. I was excited when I saw it, but even more so when I looked at the pictures later: the piece of meat was actually a fully intact harbor porpoise fetus!!

T137A with harbor porpoise fetus

Just imagine the dexterity required to remove that from the mother intact....I know many people are sad to see a photo like this, but it just left me in awe to witness it live!

After finishing their meal and the four whales grouped up and started heading towards Stuart Island. About now most of the other boats on scene took off, leaving us with the whales! It's the first time I've had to try and track transients on my own. When they zig-zag all over the place and take long dives (these guys were going down for 6 minutes at a time) you never know where they might pop up next. Luckily, the waters were like glass so we could see them from far away regardless of where they popped up.

The T137s

On one surfacing they suddenly made a left turn and started heading across Haro. This group of whales has recently spent a lot of time in Puget Sound and got the reputation for being boat curious. For whatever reason, in the whole wide straight, they chose to pass by right off our stern. (They didn't really seem especially curious about us, though - they just seemed to not care we were there.)

13 year-old male T137A. Focal length on the zoom lens was just 86mm for this shot!

Once they passed us, their blows looked awesome:

We followed them over towards Gooch in Canadian waters. The blows just got more impressive as the sun lowered in the sky.

T137A off Forrest Island in BC

T137A split off from the other three for a while. We thought (or hoped) they might be trying to stir up something else to eat, but they seemed content to just slowly continue on their way.

T137 and T137B

We got one last, nice look of T137A with Mt. Baker in the background:

Mt. Baker, the very distant Turn Point Light Station, and T137A

On the way home we got an unexpected grand finale when a few Dall's porpoise came over and rode the bow (and stern wake) on Serenity. It was the first time we've had playful porpoise on our boat, and it turns out our low-to-the-water ride is in the perfect splash zone for rooster-tailing Dall's! They drenched the windshield and some of my passengers before we went out separate ways.

In the end, we spent an amazing four hours with the T137s; that's among the longest length of time I've been able to follow one family group of whales (resident or transient) and see what they do. It's super interesting to watch them over a period of hours rather than just getting a snapshot of their day when they pass by land or on a commercial whale-watching trip. Because I'm such a nerd, I made this little map to show where we followed them:

So far March is off to an AMAZING start!!