July 22 - August 14: Playing Catch Up on Whale Sigthings!

Over the last couple weeks I've had a lot of distant and/or brief whale encounters, many of which didn't seem worthy of their own blog post during the height of summer when I'm busy with so many other things as well! But now I've gotten so behind on sharing whale sightings that I have plenty of photos to share all in one go.

On July 22nd, the two halves of J-Pod met up in rough seas right off Lime Kiln. Most of the whales were pretty far offshore, but we got a surprise pass by J41 Eclipse and her son J51 Nova.

On August 3rd, all of J-Pod along with the L4s, L47s, and L26s made their way up Haro Strait in the evening. I still say nothing beats sunset whales!

L47 Marina and L115 Mystic

L92 Crewser

It was cool to see one of the biggest and one of the smallest members of L-Pod traveling together:

L92 Crewser and little L122, who will be named this month

On August 5th, the same group came back down Haro Strait, spread all the way across. Only a few were close enough to see from Lime Kiln on another day with wild seas.

Those babies gotta get up extra high to breathe when the seas are choppy!

IDs were especially difficult because of the backlighting, and the fact that the whales were "all mixed up" from our human perspective. For instance, I saw J31 Tsuchi traveling with L83 Moonlight!

On August 8th, K-Pod returned after an unheard of nearly two month absence in the middle of summer!  I just missed seeing them on August 9th as they passed with J-Pod, but did catch this awesome breach by J16 Slick.

J16 Slick

The "just missed" streak continued in the evening as I only caught the tail end of another pass, but got to see J17 Princess Angeline and her calf J53, who will also be named this month.

J17 Princess Angeline and J53

On August 11th, trying to increase my odds, I got up extra early to head out to the west side in hope of whales. My gamble paid off as I spotted J34 Doublestuf in the early morning light, foraging off of Land Bank. Surprisingly, only he, his mom J22 Oreo, and brother J38 Cookie were there. The rest of Js and part of K-Pod went north during the night without them! While for that day it looked eerily similar to when we had the three L22s on their own on the west side for a time during the summer of 2013, the J22s reunited with the rest of their pod by the end of the day.

J34 Doublestuf

On August 12th I finally caught up with the K12s and K13s, whales I hadn't really gotten a good look at yet this year. (In reality, I just missed them again at Lime Kiln, so we jumped out on our boat - enough misses!) We followed the K12s up to Boundary Pass - the K13s were a bit ahead, so I still didn't get a look at them.

K12 Sequim and K43 Saturna

While on the water with the K12s and K13s, we got word from another boater that ALL the other Southern Residents were inbound from the Strait of Juan de Fuca! Could we possibly be in for our first superpod of the year? Anticipating a yes, we got up early again the next morning, on August 13th spent four hours at Lime Kiln before we heard the K12s and K13s were staying up north and everyone else who had just come in the night before after dark was westbound again. Still, those early summer mornings are pretty darn spectacular with or without whales.

Mt. Baker sunrise as seen from Friday Harbor

Black oystercatcher at Lime Kiln

Female belted kingfisher with fish off Lime Kiln

Parent feeding juvenile oystercatcher at limpet

That afternoon, we heard the T65As were heading down San Juan Channel, hugging the San Juan shoreline. We went out to the Friday Harbor Labs in hopes of seeing them. As they approached, they were indeed right off the rocks. Unfortunately right after I took this photo, they went on a long dive and next surfaced around the corner past us to the south!

It was such a hot summer Saturday, that hanging out by the water continued to sound pretty good. We watched the Ts as they progressed down the channel into Griffin Bay, and then caught them as the exited Cattle Pass.

The Western Prince with the T65As passing Goose Island in Cattle Pass

The next day, August 14th, the K12s and K13s did the westside shuffle. We got to Lime Kiln just as they were passing heading north, but could barely see them! I got my first look at K20 Spock on the viewfinder of my camera, where I could see her better than with my naked eye through the fog!

K20 Spock - seen better by my camera than by me

Luckily, the fog lifted before the whales came back south, and I got a proper good look at K20 as she came right near the kelp!

K20 Spock

The whales were fighting a strong flood tide to head south, but seemed to be enjoying the currents, doing lots of breaches and tail slaps as they rolled at the surface.

Today, after having just the K12s and K13s in inland waters for several days, some other Js and Ks made their way back east. Bizarrely, the K12s and K13s went north without waiting to meet up with them, and then this evening just four whales (including J2 Granny) went north without any others, who were still south and milling off False Bay. Every day continues to be different in terms of which whales are where and with whom, so who knows what tomorrow and the coming weeks will bring!

June 25th - June 29th: Whales, Whales, and More Whales!

June was a fantastic month from start to finish, with Residents around (and on the west side of San Juan Island) almost every day. After last year's record low sightings, it feels an awful lot like the "good ol' days", as many local naturalists have been commenting. Lest anyone get too carried away, salmon numbers have been better than the last three years, but still much, much lower than historical numbers. But we're all certainly enjoying the presence of the whales, and loving the fact that right now at least they're finding enough to eat to stick around!

June 25th

I took an early lunch from work to go out and join friends at Land Bank, where watched Js and Ls porpoise their way across the strait directly towards us. They spread out all along the west side of San Juan Island, but the group that passed us (including J2, the J14s, and the J16s) kept booking it north.

A whale wows a couple of kayakers - really adds some perspective so you can tell how big the whales are!

J16 Slick

We were in a cool spot on the cliffs - looking right down into the water underneath us. This harbor seal looked like he was watching the whales, too.

June 27th

After a stressful week at work, I was beat, and debating between a nap and checking out the west side for whales. Guess which one I did? Luckily my timing was great, as I got there just as the leaders were passing Land Bank heading south. The lighting was really unique, too - the water looked almost metallic.

The closest group included L83 Moonlight, who seemed to be surfacing in as many different ways as possible. She never once surfaced like a "normal" whale, instead lunging and rolling her way to the surface with every breath.

L83 Moonlight lunges to the surface

The clouds were just beautiful even though it was a bit gray out:

I couldn't pass up photographing my favorite tree:

June 28th

My dad came up for a quick visit on the weekend, and was willing to tag along with me for a regular Saturday afternoon. That meant getting a snack at the Farmer's Market, then heading to the west side for more whales! It also meant I got some rare pictures of myself "in action".

At Land Bank the whales were offshore of the kelp bed, until J26 Mike surfaced in shore, wowing both us and some kayakers.

J26 Mike

With him was L82 Kasatka....they were swimming slowly, within touching distance, and seemed to be in no hurry to go anywhere. I can't help but anthropomorphize a little bit....sure seemed like they were on the orca equivalent of a "date":

J26 Mike and L82 Kasatka

A short distance behind them was a larger group of whales, including a couple other males:

J27 Blackberry and J34 Doublestuf - amazing to see Doublestuf's fin rivaling Blackberry's in height!

The whales continued slowly north and looked to be angling in shore. In what has become a norm for me this season, I did the run up the hill at Land Bank, quick drive to Lime Kiln, and run back down the hill to the shoreline to catch the whales a second time, usually closer to shore than the first pass. It worked perfectly on this day.

A much closer look at J27 Blackberry from Lime Kiln

J27 Blackberry, his younger brother J39 Mako, and juvenile L106 Pooka were all rolling around and roughhousing together. I love the blue in the water as the sun poked through the clouds!

An inverted tail slap from L106 Pooka

Boys will be boys - bros Blackberry and Mako goof around

J39 Mako

J27 Blackberry

I was so focused on the group close to shore I almost missed this amazing line up offshore:

June 29th

I don't know what it is, but I'm in the groove with the whales right now, and I love it. Sunday I wasn't even entirely sure what was going on with the whales, but I went to the west side and got to Lime Kiln in perfect time to see J2 Granny and another group of whales head north.

J2 Granny leads the way, as she so often does

This time I skipped the running from Land Bank part, and was set up perfectly at the south end of Lime Kiln. The whales were way offshore of Land Bank, but angled in to right where I was sitting on the rocks.

L47 Marina and L115 Mystic

Best feeling in the world - heading right for ya!

Sometimes I want to watch the whales not through a viewfinder, but I also always want to take pictures....so at times I try to click the shutter without looking, and hope for the best. I tend to get a lot of lopsided photos of partial whales, but this one turned out quite nicely, and also shows just how close to shore these guys come.

Another shot of L47 Marina:

L47 Marina

After this group passed by, I could see many more whales to the south. They were facing south, trying to swim south, but not making much progress against the flood tide. I decided to wait it out, and in the meantime apparently became enough apart of the scenery for some birds to come by and hang out pretty close to where I was on the rocks:

Northwestern crow

Glaucous-winged gull: yawning, not yelling

Black oystercatcher

Finally the whales "gave in" and went with the tide to follow Granny north. They were very spread out and came by in 2s and 3s, but the first trio of whales had me laughing out loud. After trying to buck the strong tide for the better part of an hour, they turned around and drifted north in the swift current, logging a the surface. In my mind, they were saying, "Fine, I'll go north, but I'm not going to expend any effort to it!"

Resigned to going north

The youngsters seemed to be loving the strong tide, though, as they were logging at the surface upside down or sideways, not swimming but still traveling quickly. "Look at me mom, I'm going north upside down without trying!" Okay, maybe a sign I'm spending too much time with the whales now that I'm narrating their thoughts for them? ;)

Okay, that recaps just four days of sightings, but gets me caught up to today, which will get featured in its own blog post! So many whales, so little time - not that I'm complaining!

An August Whale Update

No Southern Resident Killer Whales were seen from July 20 to August 7, an unusually lengthy absence during the summer months though not entirely unheard of (in 2000 they were gone for five weeks!) On August 7th a somewhat surprising group of whales returned to the westside of San Juan Island - the L54 matriline along with orphaned boys L88 Wavewalker and L84 Nyssa. Last year, these whales only came into inland waters two or three times over the course of the whole summer, so it was interesting that they should spend some time here by themselves for several days in mid August. What's good to see is that Wavewalker and Nyssa have seemingly found themselves an adopted mom in L54 Ino; often adult males that lose their mothers as these two have don't live much longer unless they find another adult female to latch on to. 

Starting on August 11 all members of J-, K-, and L-Pods made a brief visit to the Salish Sea, the first of several. Each time, they have stayed less than 48 hours, and only on that first visit did they go north to the Fraser River; every other time they've stayed off the south end of San Juan Island before departing out the Strait of Juan de Fuca again. We expect all three pods to be traveling together as we approach fall, but the consensus is there must not be enough fish (Chinook) here to sustain them all for more than about a day.

Looking again at the Albion Chinook test catch data in the lower Fraser River, we see perhaps why this is. There have been a few spikes in Chinook numbers, perhaps luring the Southern Residents back to their traditional foraging grounds here near San Juan Island:

The cumulative numbers are still pretty dismal, however:

People often ask me how I manage to get close photos of the whales so often. The honest answer is: I don't! For many weeks, this is about as close as I got to a killer whale:

Adult male orca off Eagle Point of San Juan Island August 18, 2013

While selfishly I of course want to be seeing the whales every day, the most important thing is that they're finding food wherever they are hanging out. I'm okay with them not being here as long as they're eating! Still, I've been making every attempt to see them when I can, though often it's when you're not trying to hard that things work out. On August 17th I had an appointment to meet someone at Lime Kiln, and was surprised when the L54s and Co. were out off the lighthouse most of the afternoon. They had been around several times, but like the visiting superpods lately, I was beginning not to expect them to go far enough north for shore-based whale watchers like myself to be able to see them. So it was a nice treat.

One big spyhop from L54 Ino was a surprise admist all the foraging these six whales were doing

L88 Wavewalker, a twenty year-old male who is the last living member of his matriline, seems to have found a pal in L108 Coho, a seven year-old male that is one of L54 Ino's offspring. The two were fishing together on this afternoon, and I've heard from others this seems to be a bond in the making.

The superpod visits have been so brief and far from the best shore-based whale watch sites that I had a feeling I was going to have to get out on a boat to see them. The stars aligned for me on the evening of August 22nd, when the news of an incoming superpod aligned with a friend and co-worker being willing and able to take his boat out for a little evening cruise. We headed out from Roche Harbor and met up with the incoming whales in the middle of Haro Strait a little to the northwest of False Bay at about 7:15 PM.

The first group of whales we came across was the L47s. I'd be remiss if I didn't say that seeing this family group of five whales brought a tear to my eye, it was so good to see Southern Residents after weeks and weeks of hoping for this sort of encounter.

From left to right: L91 Muncher, L83 Moonlight, L110 Midnight, L115Mystic

The whales were super spread out over dozens of square miles. In this shot of L91 Muncher surfacing, I didn't even notice until looking at the image on the computer that there's a breaching whale in the background (the little black and white speck on the horizon to her left).

L91 Muncher

L-Pod, in addition to having several "dead end" matrilines with no juvenile or reproductive age females, also has a strongly male-skewed ratio among its young whales. The L47 matriline thus holds an even bigger importance when it comes to the future of the pod. Both juveniles in this family group are males, but there are two reproductive age females. We hope to see Muncher with her first calf soon, and with her first offspring being six years old, L83 Moonlight is could also have another calf at any time.

L83 Moonlight and her six year-old son L110 Midnight. We would expect and hope Moonlight to be having another calf soon; for L-Pod's sake we hope she will have a female!

The L47s were traveling steadily along until Moonlight started feeling a little playful. She did a couple of tail slaps and then a huge breach! I could hardly believe my eyes - such perfect lighting!

Breach by L83 Moonlight

As the L47s continued heading towards the shore of San Juan Island, we moved a little further south where we came across the J22s. We followed along with J32 Rhapsody for a while. She was having a grand old time by herself! While we only saw one breach from Moonlight, Rhapsody must have breached about ten times, with some tail slaps thrown in for good measure.

Breach by J32 Rhapsody

Another breach from J32 Rhapsody

As she continued south, we went a little ways further offshore where we found the K12 matriline. While the sunset lighting on the breaches above was perfect, it was also pretty neat to look in the other direction and have the whales silhouetted against the background of the Olympic Mountains or Vancouver Island.

K37 Rainshadow (left) with his mom K12 Sequim

K33 Tika, who at age 12 has a fin "sprout" - he'll have a towering dorsal fin before too long!

All too soon the sun was setting and it was time to head back. We left the whales heading southeast as we turned back to the north, making a stop along the way to see Lime Kiln Lighthouse from the water side - opposite of where I usually am!

Usually I watch sunsets from the rocks below the lighthouse - this time I was out on the water looking back towards shore

It was a pretty special evening out there, made all the more extraordinary by the news the following morning that the whales were already heading west again back out towards the open ocean, presumably in search of the Chinook they are still not finding here.