J31 Tsuchi - Another Mystery Solved

Jeanne and I have been working at identifying whales based on eyepatches. While we usually use the dorsal fin and saddle patch to identify individual orcas, it turns out almost anywhere black meets white there are subtle individual differences in markings. Long-time blog readers may remember the first eyepatch revelation, when Jeanne figured out the mystery whale of the above-water vocalization incident in 2004 was actually L85 Mystery, based on his eyepatch.

Well late last night, while sorting through photos and pulling out good eyepatch shots, I had a revelation of my own. This is one of my favorite spyhop photos I've ever taken, and I've always loved the jagged black and white zig-zag by the whale's mouth. On this particlar day back in 2005, only J-Pod was present, and J-Pod is the family group we see (and thus, the whales I most often photograph). Still, I had never noticed this marking in any of my other photographs, so the identity of this spyhopping whale had remained a mystery...until now.


Yesterday I was looking at this lunging whale in the photo below; a great eyepatch shot because when the whale comes this high out of the water you can see the whole eyepatch. I had previously identified the whale in this photo as J31 - Tsuchi, and was confirming my identification by looking at another eyepatch shot of Tsuchi. As I zoomed in to get a close look at the eyepatch, some suspiciously familiar zig-zag marks caught my eye!



Both the markings and the eyepatch look slightly different because you're seeing the whale at a different angle, but both match the spyhop photo. So nearly four years later, I've identified my mystery spyhopping whale as J31 Tsuchi! The funniest part is the spyhop photo and the lunging whale photo were only taken 3 days apart in 2005, so I've had the evidence all this time. It just goes to show you never know what you might learn by studying your photographs a little closer. Hopefully I'll be able to ID some whales from other spyhop photos in the future as I learn the eyepatches better.

"Mystery" solved!

Back in 2004, I witnessed an amazing thing as the L12 family group was traveling south towards Lime Kiln Lighthouse. One whale, either a female or a young male, came into view way ahead of the rest of the whales. It swam directly at the few of us sitting on the rocks, and stopped in the kelp bed just off of the lighthouse. Then, for the next few minutes, it stayed on the surface and continuously vocalized into the open air. It's one of the few times I've been able to identify a call type when a whale vocalizes on the surface (it was S2iii), and the only time I have ever heard a whale vocalize on the surface in succession again and again and again. Whenever the whale submerged, it continued vocalizing (as we heard over the hydrophones), and whenever it surfaced it was completely draped in kelp. It's one of the most bizarre encounters I've ever had with the whales, as it left all of us on shore asking helplessly "What are you trying to tell us?!" As the rest of the L12s came into view much farther offshore a few minutes later, the whale turned and head out, joining up with them and continuing on their way.

My friend Jeanne was there to witness it with me, and between the video she took and the photos I took we tried in vain to identify the whale. It was no use - the whale was backlit, and every time it surfaced it was so covered in kelp it was impossible to discern anything about the saddle patch. We finally let it rest and settled for the fact that we would never know who the mystery whale was.

Well, a recent project of ours has been to start developing an eyepatch guide for the whales. In addition to the saddle patch that sits just behind the dorsal fin, each whale also has a unique eyepatch. We humans don't use eyepatches all that often to ID the whales since the differences can be subtle and we don't always get a good look at their eyepatch when they surface - in the past eyepatches have pretty much just used to confirm a saddle patch ID and that's about it. The whales, on the other hand, may very whale use eyepatch shape to tell one another apart. Anyway, Jeanne and I are slowly building our eyepatch database with hope that we can ID whales who spyhop, and other instances where you just don't get a good look at the saddle. Well, today we had our first ever "eyepatch breakthrough", as Jeanne went back and looked at her video of what we've come to call the "above water vocalization incident" - it turns out the mystery whale is (how appropriate): Mystery L85!! You can watch a short video clip from this incident on Jeanne's blog here.

The above image illustrates how eyepatches can be different. The one on the left is an unusual shape. The one in the middle has some black "beauty mark" spots in the middle of it. The one on the right has indistinct edges - notice especially how along the right side it looks "smudged".