J-Pod Welcomes Me Home on March 24th

I was thrilled and surprised on my first full day back on the island - March 24th - to hear that J-Pod was on the west side of San Juan Island! When I got off work I thought I had probably missed them at Lime Kiln, so I headed for the boat and hopped out into Haro Strait. Turns out the whales were still further south and the seas were a bit lumpy, so I turned back, but not before stumbling across the humpback whale Big Mama BCY0324!

Big Mama BCY0324

 I ended up getting to Lime Kiln on shore just in time to see the J19s foraging off the lighthouse.

From left to right calf J51, big sister J41 Eclipse, and mom J19 Shaci

It was cool to see little J51 swimming in big sister's slipstream rather than in mom's. It must have been big sister day, because later on I saw baby J50 swimming alongside sister J42 Echo rather than with mom J16 Slick!

J51 pops up on his/her own....

...followed a moment later by mom and sister

These three whales were seemingly hanging out waiting for most of the rest of J-Pod to catch up. The other Js took their sweet time, but from the south end of the park I could see them slowly, slowly heading our direction close to shore!

There's no better than feeling than watching whales approaching!

The J22s, J17s, and J14s slowly passed Lime Kiln in one big, semi-playful group. It was an extra special treat because it came in March!

J34 Doublestuf did several series of big tailslaps!

The sadness of leaving beautiful Baja and the friendly gray whales behind was definitely softened by this unexpected J-Pod passby! Here's hoping for a spring full of whale-sightings - April and May used to be fantastic months for seeing J-Pod here, but that's been less true in recent years.

From left to right (I think): J37 Hy'Shqa, J14 Samish, J46 Star, and J28 Polaris

Sept 24: Split Fin the Humpback

While the resident killer whales have been spending less time here recently compared to a decade or more ago, one species showing the opposite trend is the humpback whale. Ten years ago, humpbacks were a rare sight here, but now it seems like we're seeing more of them every year and for longer of the year each season. We've had some regulars hanging out a lot this summer, and one of them spent 3-4 days doing the "westside shuffle" last week: Split Fin.

Split Fin

The story I've pieced together is that Split Fin was born to one of our other local humpbacks in 2006. In 2007, he/she was seen with a freshly split dorsal fin, possibly from a vessel strike. Despite the injury (which has made it a very distinct whale), this animal continues to frequent our local waters every summer, and is now a full grown adult!

I went out to the west side to look for this humpback on September 24th, and was totally surprised when I got to Lime Kiln and the first whale I saw was an orca! Where did you guys come from?

The orcas were heading north as the humpback went south, and I captures this distant shot of both species on the surface at the same time. They're undoubtedly aware of one another's presence; I wonder what interaction if any they have?

My first-ever photo of a humpback AND an orca!

As the spread out orcas meandered their way north, Split Fin came all the way along the length of the shoreline at Lime Kiln about 100 yards offshore - my best shore-based viewing of a humpback to date! The whale was moving slow enough I could walk down to the next rocky outcropping in between surfacings.

Humpback whale blows are much bigger and louder than orca blows!

Split Fin arches for a dive

Split Fin is unusual for a humpback in that he/she has a unique dorsal fin - most humpbacks are identified by their tail flukes. I got one nice shot showing Split Fin's flukes:

In addition to this afternoon, I've of course been spending some other days on the west side, trying to fully enjoy the great weather while it lasts. When you sit and wait for whales, you also see lots of other amazing things. I love these quiet moments out in nature:

Male harlequin duck

Female harlequin duck

Great blue heron

I've also added a few birds to the year list: black turnstone (183), American pipit (184), and pine siskin (185). Oh yeah, I've had a few more glimpses of the orcas, too :)

All of J-Pod and three K-Pod whales (K16, K35, and K21) have been around. Often this time of year, all three pods are traveling together. I can only assume we're seeing just a third of the population because there's not enough salmon here to feed everybody, like in years past.

Still, even if there are fewer whales here, and even if they're further away than other times (like that last amazing encounter with J34 - see my previous post), every time seeing them is magical in its own way.

Offshore orcas the evening of September 26

Offshore orcas the morning of September 27

As beautiful as this week's worth of sightings were, the weekend would hold another day to remember, full of unbelievable wildlife sightings....stay tuned!

Whales Everywhere! In October!

On Saturday I hopped out on Jim Maya's boat the Peregrine for an afternoon trip. We weren't even five minutes off the dock when we met up with a group of six transients: the T36As and part of the T124s. This group didn't have any adult males, but was two adult females, each with their two offspring.

T36A (left) and T36A1

T124D with one year-old T36A2

T124D, a 17 year-old female

This is probably my favorite orca shot of the day:

From left to right: T36A, T124D, and T124

We followed the whales across Open Bay and along Henry Island, where they started surfacing all in a tight group:

Last month I added a whale with red-necked phalaropes to my unofficial bird-with-orcas photo collection, and I got another new one on this day: an orca with a great blue heron! Can you see it?

We left the whales sooner than we might have otherwise because there were so many other cetacean sightings in northern Haro Strait. It was amusing as we turned to head west across the strait to see other whale-watching boats zig-zagging in all different directions as they headed from one group of marine mammals to another. Not all days are like that, but it sure is special when it is! Our target was a humpback whale, which we spotted just south of D'Arcy Island. On the way there I saw a few close pigeon guillemots, already in winter plumage:

After watching the one humpback whale (there were boats visible to the south watching two more transient orcas, T20 and T21), we headed up towards Turn Point where we heard another boat had a group of playful Dall's porpoise. When we got up there, we couldn't find a single porpoise, but one of our passengers spotted a blow: it was another humpback whale! In fact, it was two of them traveling together, a pair that had been seen earlier in the day but had been lost. (Obviously they weren't lost - the whale watch boats just lost them.)

Here's another shot a moment later in the same sequence, with the rear whale fluking and the front whale arching its back for a dive:

I didn't post any pictures of the first humpback whale because they were all way surpassed by the photos I took of these two. One of these whales was CS280, an animal identified from the Clayquot Sound ID guide (on the west side of Vancouver Island). Humpback whales are identified by the black and white markings on the underside of their tail flukes, so you can tell this is CS280 from this photo:

Humpback whale CS280

The other whale was BCY0324 (after writing this blog post, whale names like "J2" seem so much more manageable!). "BC" whales have been identified in British Columbia, and are given an X, Y, or Z depending on the amount of white on their flukes. This whale, however, is known locally as Big Mama. In the late 1800s and early 1900s humpback whales were hunted in the Salish Sea, but it didn't take long to exterminate the local population. For decades, humpback whales weren't seen in inland waters. All that started to change in 1999, when Big Mama was the first humpback whale to be regularly seen in the area. Humpback whale sightings started to become common in about 2005, and they're becoming more and more numerous every year. This is the best humpback whale year yet, with animals around all spring, summer, and fall. It was cool to meet the first whale that came back to the Salish Sea - maybe she's the one that spread the word about returning to these straits!

BCY0324 "Big Mama"

These whales sure didn't seem to mind our presence. Whenever they would go down for a longer dive we would remain parked, and they'd pop up again right near the boat. At one point, they surfaced about 15 yards off the starboard side!

 I took a short video when they were this close that I'll post at another time, too. Look how broad these guys look head-on (or in this case, behind-on):

When you see them at this range, it's obvious they're more than twice as big as an orca! They look huge! And those tails that they lift on a dive are just so photogenic:

I always love the more abstract shots, like this one, which is one of my personal favorites from the day. Big Mama is diving, and after arching her tail at the end of her last surfacing, she's bringing her tail back in the other direction here, the tips of her flukes still just visible before she paddles her tail to thrust herself forwards:

 

It doesn't look anything like the span between those two fluke tips is 10-15 feet in the above shot, but it is! 

By this time, the six transients we were with earlier had crossed to the west side of Haro Strait too, and we could see their blows in the distance behind this pair of humpbacks. Unfortunately the timing was never quite right to get both species in one shot! But wow, the lighting sure got beautiful.

All too soon, it was time to leave, and we watched as the pair of humpbacks continued on their way together:

One of my last views was of Big Mama fluking with the Olympic Mountains in the background - what a place I live!!!