August 21-23: Mixed Pod Sub-Group, And Some Sad News

From August 21st-23rd we had an odd group of about 30 whales traveling together: members of all three pods, but not all the whales from any pod! Over the course of those three days I was lucky to have several great encounters with them both by boat and from shore. Here are some highlights:

L72 Racer, L105 Fluke, and J45 Se-Yi'-Chn

L87 Onyx

Members of L-Pod along the Henry Island shoreline

Mixed group of Ks and Ls

Mixed group of Ks and Ls

Such speed! Porpoising whales

Look close for the third whale - a calf barely visible!

Three porpoising all together

L92 Crewser on the right

L103 Lapis and her son L123, who will be named at the end of this month

Baby face! Love seeing L123's shadow on his mom's back

K27 Deadhead and her son K44 Ripple in the middle

L82 Kasatka silhouetted in a golden sunset

L116 Finn

K34 Cali

Half breach by L82 under the Olympic Mountains

The Sidney-Friday Harbor run of the Washington State Ferry in the background!

K20 Spock off Stuart Island

The evening of August 23rd ended when it was almost too dark to see, sitting on the rocks at Lime Kiln and listening to the echoing blows of part of J-Pod passing bay. I tried to soak up the sound - such a peaceful, mysterious one - knowing we're just a month away from whale sightings dwindling, and wanting to keep it within me for the long winter months.

Sadly, the next day, August 24th, the Center for Whale Research announced that J14 Samish is missing and presumed dead. I hadn't seen her during our last few encounters with her family group, but the whales have been so spread out most of the time and also so mixed up it's been hard to figure out who all is there. From what I've heard, it sounds like she didn't look bad ahead of time, just disappeared in early August. Here's my last photo of her, taken in mid-July off the rocks at Lime Kiln, during a memorable passby that I now have another reason to never forget:

J14 Samish

Samish, as a 42 year-old female, leaves us too young, and leaves behind her children and grandson who will hopefully bond together and do have the ultimate leader in J2 Granny, Samish's presumed grandmother. I prepare myself to lose a couple whales every year, but whenever it's a J-Pod whale it seems especially hard to take, as I have spent so much time with them over the years. 

J37 Hy'shqa and J49 T'ilem I'nges - now without their mother and grandmother, J14 Samish

Unfortunately this wasn't the only bad news. The Center also announced that J28 Polaris was looking very underweight, and was likely within days of her death. This was an even bigger blow to hear, as she's a breeding age female with a nursing calf - the most important age/sex class if this population has any hope of survival. Her family group came in on August 25th, and I caught a distant glimpse of Polaris. Yesterday, the 26th, the J17s were foraging off the west side for hours, and I got a better look at her off Land Bank's Westside Preserve.

J28 Polaris, looking thin - click to see a larger version and notice the depressions around her eyepatches and blowholes, an area that should be robust on a healthy whale

I have to take the fact that she's still alive as a hopeful sign. She's made it this far, and she's clearly a fighter - with a son and daughter who depend on her. There's a good chance J46 Star would make it on her own, with the support of her extended family, but little J54, who is less than a year old, would likely perish if he lost his mother so young. We're all sending Polaris and her family all the positive healing energy we can to continue to fight and hopefully pull through.

With the loss of Samish the Southern Resident population stands at 82 individuals. While we've been lucky to have whales around on almost a daily basis, the pods and sub-groups continue to fracture. Gone are the days of a decade ago when we would see all of J- and K-Pods traveling together on a daily basis. Now we're seeing smaller sub-groups, and in many cases these are even spread over miles as a single matriline might be the only whales you see as they forage throughout their traditional summer feeding grounds. We've technically had a couple "superpods" this summer, with all the whales in inland waters, but in my mind it doesn't really count if their spread from the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the Fraser River, utilizing the entire inland sea. The term "superpod" conjures up an image of 80 whales all together, so many dorsal fins every direction you look. I can only hope that's a sight we'll still see this year.

So, what can we do? While the phone calls, e-mails, letters, and petitions feel like they're falling on deaf ears, we have to remember that big changes take time. There are things going on behind the scenes that will hopefully still lead to major actions - such as the breaching of the four Lower Snake River dams. A year and a half ago this issue wasn't on the radar of major politicians, or even many major environmental groups. Now, everyone has been briefed on the situation, and we just need public opinion to continue to encourage someone in a position of power to be bold enough to stand up and do the right thing. Check out this recent blog post by the international group Ocean, and sign this petition by the National Resources Defense Council urging the administrator of NOAA to take action. Also please continue to call the White House comment hotline at 202-456-1111 and ask for the President to issue an executive order to breach the four Lower Snake River dams. 

It's amazing to watch these whales who, in the midst of loss and struggling to find enough to eat, also find time to surf freighter wakes (check out this video from August 24th!) and breach like crazy as they pass their favorite places. We, too, must find ways to carry on, and absolutely to continue to find joy in spending time with these amazing wild whales. In the meantime, we must also continue to do all that we can to help them fight for their survival.

10 Common Myths About Southern Residents

Well, it's that time of year - summer on San Juan Island, aka tourist season. Don't get me wrong, it's great that so many people get the chance to see killer whales in the wild, but as a naturalist, it's hard not to cringe sometimes at some of the "facts" you overhear people sharing about these whales. The worst part is, many of these don't just come from visitors, but also come from the mouths of locals, some of them kayak guides or naturalists. When people get excited about the whales, there's an amazing opportunity there to educate them, but that education is only valuable if it's correct! So here are a few of our favorites - with the truth.

June 22nd L-Pod pass. From left to right: L55 Nugget, L118 Jade, L103 Lapis, L105 Fluke, L82 Kasatka, and L95 Nigel.

1. We know Granny is 103 years old because we first saw/photographed her in 1911.
   I can't believe how often I hear this one. I know it's a nice idea, but the truth is, we have no idea how old Granny is. Her birth year of 1911 is an estimate researchers arrived at by making some key assumptions about her relationships to other whales: namely that she was the mother of J1 Ruffles and that he was her last calf. The truth is, the earliest photographs of Granny were taken in the late 1960s, when she was already an adult. So while we're sure she's an old whale, the age estimate could be off by several decades one way or the other. Also, photo ID studies of killer whales didn't start until the 1970s.
2. Granny and other older whales are slower/less active than younger whales.
   Old age doesn't slow whales down at all. Every whale, from the youngest calf to the oldest matriarch, has to be able to keep up with the pod, which travels up to 100 miles a day. Granny is often in the lead, sometimes a mile or more ahead of the rest of the pod. And the old girl has still got it: she's been known to breach, spyhop, and tailslap with the best of them.
3. I've seen the residents eat seals, pink/sockeye salmon, etc.
   The locals in particular really like this one. First of all, there are two types of local killer whales: marine mammal eating transients and fish eating residents. These two groups are most strongly differentiated by what they prey upon, so if you see a whale take down a seal, it's a transient. Secondly, it is hard to believe at first that residents will preferentially feed on Chinook salmon even when other fish species are more abundant, but that's what decades of research have shown. This paper summarizes it nicely. They do occasionally eat other fish species, but in the summer months in the San Juans, they are eating almost exclusively Fraser River Chinook.
4. The whales respond when I scream at them, sing to them, my baby cries, etc.
   Honestly, we all have our superstitions about what bring the whales close, but most if not all of them are just wishful thinking. For one, the sound barrier between air and water is pretty good, so when you're on shore, chances are the whales can't hear you at all. Sometimes sound can travel through boat hulls, but I'm still pretty skeptical any human noise is loud enough to reach the whales. The whales do travel close to people by choice, sometimes even expressing some mutual curiosity, but I think this is purely on their terms and not dictated by anything we do.
5. They're called residents because they're here all the time
   OR
   
6. The whales are migrating through right now
   The names "resident" and "transient" are very misleading, I'll give you that. They originated when researchers saw the residents on an almost daily basis during the summer months and had only rare encounters with the transients, but as mentioned above, the true difference between them is their diet. Fish-eating and mammal-eating orcas would be more accurate descriptors. The residents do indeed spend longer lengths of time in the Salish Sea than transients (which are also started to be known as Bigg's killer whales), and they can and have been seen here in every month of the year, but they tend to roam the rest of their range more in the winter months. They are not, however, migratory like some of the larger whale species are. They don't have a breeding grounds and a feeding grounds, and when they're heading north in Haro Strait they're not "migrating". These guys feed and breed all year round, and similarly can be found anywhere within their range from British Columbia to central California at any time of year.
7. The whales always pass by in the morning/evening/at 2:36 PM....
   "What time do the whales come by?" is the most notorious tourist question every year. To give people the benefit of the doubt, some animals do have certain patterns, such as being more active in the morning or evening, etc. Additionally, the whales do sometimes get into certain cycles; for instance, when they're making their regular circuit from the San Juan Islands to the Fraser River, it often takes about 24 hours, meaning for several days they may consistently be seen on the west side of San Juan in the morning. But I'm fond of saying that just as soon as we think we've figured out a pattern for the whales, they change it, and do something different. While they do have certain typical travel patterns, the truth is they can be in any place at any time of day, and there's no regularity to what time of day they're seen in a particular spot.
8. There's the dominant/alpha male
   It's a common configuration among social animals, so it's easy to forgive this mistake at first: that the biggest whale out there is in charge and is surrounded by his harem of females. What's especially frustrating is when you still hear people saying this after having imparted some more accurate information as a naturalist on boat or on shore! Researchers first thought the big bulls were probably the top dogs, too, but over time we've learned that resident orca societies are matrilineal. Each pod is made up of a female, her offspring, her daughter and sisters' offspring, and so on, with up to five living generations at a time. Those guys sporting six-foot dorsals are really big mama's boys, spending their whole life in mom's family group and often swimming right beside her as an adult. Mating only occurs when unrelated families get together to socialize.
9.  They're putting on a show for us!I like to call this the SeaWorld mentality. It shows just how far our perceived dominion over nature has gone. I understand for many people they use this phrase without really believing the whales are doing something for our benefit, for instance, by saying "That was quite a show!" after an amazing close passby. But the reason this phrase rankles a lot of us naturalists is because there are indeed those out there who think the whales are showing off for us. I can say with 100% confidence, however, that the whales are not coming close, breaching, being active, or anything else for us. Everything they do, they're doing it because they want to. Actually, that's the real beauty of watching wild killer whales. What an honor to be able to witness whales doing what they want to do. SO much better than SeaWorld.
10. That whale is so fat - she must be pregnant!Okay, this one has become an especially hot topic among our local whale community right now. Perhaps it's because it's been since August 2012 that we've had a new calf born to the Southern Residents (not good - but that's a subject for another blog post), but the topic of orca babies has been prevalent lately. Rumors about which whales might be expecting, based mostly on large bellies visible in breach photos, have been flying back and forth over Facebook during the last couple weeks. We do have many females who are "due" to have a baby, either because of their age or the time it's been since they had their last calf. But the reality is orcas don't show any reliable visible signs of pregnancy. There have been times people are sure a whale is pregnant based on how she looks, but she doesn't ever show up with a baby. (Stillborn calves could be a possibility, but it's happened to often for that to always be the case.) Other times we can go back and look at photos of a whale who gives birth to see what she looked like ahead of time, and again, no obvious clues. So while we're all more than ready for little J50, K45, or L120 to join us, we have no idea when that will be or who will be the lucky mom.

L-Pod Flyby

On June 17th, ALL of L-Pod made their way into inland waters, which is a relatively rare occurrence. Several of the L-Pod matrilines (the L2s, L5s, and L54s) don't spend that much time here - last year they were only seen in inland waters three times! What made it even more unusual is that it was just L-Pod, with no Js or Ks along with them. It shouldn't have been too surprising, then, that their travel patterns weren't the same either. Instead of coming across Haro Strait and heading north up San Juan Island which is what the residents do about 99 times out of 100, they went south and headed north up Rosario Strait instead!

On June 18th, keen to see some whales I don't see all that often, I ducked out of work for an early lunch when I heard Ls were heading back south towards the west side of San Juan Island. I don't believe all of L-Pod was present - they must have split up at some point, and I believe some animals went back south down the Rosario Strait route. The whales that were there were spread all the way across the strait, and the ones closest to shore that I could ID were from the L4 and L47 matrilines.

L86 Surprise (22 year-old female)

L47 Marina (39 year-old female)

Once I figured out who I was looking at, I took an especially close look at the youngsters in the group. Someone who follows my Orca Watcher Photography page on Facebook had recently adopted L118 Jade and asked if I had any recent pictures of her whale. I didn't have any photos of Jade from this year until this day, when the two year-old calf of an as yet unknown gender was traveling with big sister L103 Lapis:

L103 Lapis and L118 Jade

L118 Jade and L103 Lapis

I was especially glad I went out to see these whales, because not unexpectedly for L-Pod, they made their way back out west again later that night and we would again go several days until resident orcas returned.

Ks and Ls in Cattle Pass

After our amazing sunset superpod the other night all the whales headed north yesterday, then made their way back south towards San Juan Island in two separate groups today. The first group, which included J-Pod, came down the west side of San Juan Island then headed offshore and spent the afternoon foraging quite a few miles offshore. This is pretty typical behavior. The other group, however, did something completely different.

I heard about a group of whales in the north end of Rosario Strait off Orcas Island. Okay, the whales often come south through Rosario, though not as often this year. The next that I heard, however, they were westbound in Upright Channel! This means they took a route through the San Juan Islands, similar to the one the Anacortes-Friday Harbor ferry takes. I'm sure they've done it occasionally in the past, but this is the first instance I've been around for where the resident orcas actually cut through the San Juan Islands this way. (Note: The L2s did go through Thatcher Pass a couple weeks ago!)

When they reached San Juan Channel and started heading south I headed to Cattle Point at the southern end of San Juan Island to see them, and I was very interested to see who would be in this group. It's always fun to see the whales in Cattle Pass - something that only happens about two or three times a summer!

The reports I heard on the radio were that this group had at least some L-Pod whales, but when the first group of whales passed by me (in a beautifully tight group!) I realized right away it was actually a mixture of K-Pod and L-Pod whales. In the picture below, the two whales whose saddle patches you see are L27 Ophelia (left) and K12 Sequim (right):

K- and L-Pod whales pass just offshore of the Cattle Point Lighthouse. 

While I didn't identify every single member in all of these family groups, in my photos I documented whales from the following matrilines: K12s, K13s, and K14s in K-Pod; L26s, L7s, L72s, L4s, L47s, and L5s in L-Pod. A couple of interesting notes: L7 Canuck and L53 Lulu, the whales that often travel with J-Pod and were with J-Pod just a few days ago, were back with L-Pod today. Also, the four K-Pod whales (K16, K35, K21, and K40) that also often travel with J-Pod did NOT seem to be present.

K12 Sequim and her young calf K43.

Today was another day where the whales were all mixed up and intermingled with one another, so it took me quite a while to go through my photos and figure out who all was there, and who was traveling with whom. One whale that definitely stood out, however, was the only big adult male in the group, K26 Lobo:

K26 Lobo with a couple of Heermann's gulls and a glaucous-winged gull overhead.

One of the interesting combinations was the mixed up group containing the K13s and some of the L4s.

From left to right: K27 Deadhead, K13 Skagit, and L82 Kasatka.

The whales were quite active as they made their way down San Juan Channel, and as I saw them approaching I saw breaches, tail lobs, and cartwheels. Once they reached Cattle Pass and its strong currents some of them were porpoising or lunging high out of the water, like L103 Lapis on the right below. The other whale is L91 Muncher - another interesting combination!

L91 Muncher (left) and L103 Lapis (right)

As the whales headed out of the Pass they angled offshore and north, presumably heading out to meet up with the other Southern Residents that were still out there somewhere. All in all it was another great encounter with the whales - puzzling, because of their different and unexpected behavior, and uplifting to me personally, as I was the only person on the shoreline (in the busy month of August no less!) as a big group of whales passed about 150 yards offshore of me.

Double Dose of L-Pod

Yesterday I worked two trips on the Western Prince and we saw L-Pod off the southwest side of San Juan Island on both trips. L-Pod, at about 40 whales, is the largest of the three Southern Resident pods and often splits up into two or more smaller groups. The L12 sub-group are the ones that I've had the chance to spend the most time with over the last several years as they usually spend more time in inland waters than the rest of L-Pod. I really enjoyed yesterday's trips because we got to spend some quality time with some different L-Pod families that we don't often get to see a lot of.

In the morning we had a charter and the sun was shining. As we left the dock we suspected the whales were along the west side of the island but we didn't know for sure. We pulled out into the straits just as another boat found some whales further to the north, but we knew they could be more. As we cruised along we were excited to find about 15 whales just south of False Bay. Included in the group were, from left to right, L27 Ophelia, L86 Surprise, and her one year old calf L112:

For the afternoon trip the clouds had moved in a bit which was actually beautiful because the waters were glassy calm and perfect for stunning reflections, as seen in this photo of a glaucous-winged gull:

We had seen some tight groups of whales swimming together in the morning, and they were a little more spread out this afternoon. A couple of the first whales we came across were L55 Nugget and her seven year-old daughter L103 Lapis:

We also saw the two brothers L95 Nigel (14 years old) and L105 Fluke (six years old) who were swimming closely together and seemed quite playful.

Several times they were swimming upside down waving their tails in the air, and we also had a big breach from Fluke:

On both trips, we saw lots of harbor seals, nesting double-crested cormorants, and several bald eagles flying overhead on the way back home to Friday Harbor after seeing the whales. Good stuff!