June 29th: Sunset Js -- July 1st and 3rd: Ts

On June 29th, J-Pod and the K14s were back in Haro Strait after spending a few days at the Fraser River. They flipped back south before going north in the mid-afternoon, but they did go north past Lime Kiln just before sunset.

Early morning and sunset whales - there's nothing better.

Light was fading quickly but we've seen so little of these guys this spring that we couldn't help but hop on our boat for another short encounter before dark. We met up with the J19s and J11s at Open Bay, and J51 Nova was in an exuberant mood!

J51 Nova

These whales had been the lead group, moving quickly north on the flood tide, with most of the rest of J-Pod in a large, slower moving group behind them. We were a bit surprised that they all stalled out on their journey north, as we didn't see the large group. From what we heard from others, it sounds like they were milling around County Park until after dark, when they did all finally go north.

J27 Blackberry in Haro Strait at dusk

Right before we had to go in, we got a beautiful look at J31 Tsuchi.

J31 Tsuchi

They made one more trip up north but then snuck out during the following evening, and again no Southern Residents have been seen since. We had resident whales in inland waters for just 24 days through April, May, and June of this year. The average from 1990-2016 over the same time period is 60 days. The crashing spring Chinook runs on the Fraser River seem the likely culprit for this drastic change.

While it doesn't make up for the scarcity of our resident orcas, the transient killer whale sightings continue to be off the hook. Unfortunately for us most have them have been too far away for us to see, but we did get a couple of looks at the T49As over the 4th of July weekend. They've been looping around the San Juan Islands a lot, and even made two visits INTO Friday Harbor and one into Roche Harbor (on a holiday weekend no less, those crazy whales!). On July 1st we saw them from the Friday Harbor Labs as they headed north up San Juan Channel.

Spyhop from male T49A1

We got a nice look at them as they passed, but then they stopped and made a kill just north of us, giving us a longer view from shore. At one point a lot of of blood was visible on the surface of the water, leaving no doubt as to what was causing them to linger!

The T49As surface amid a blood slick from their latest marine mammal kill

Eventually they did continue north, and so did we, catching them again from Reuben Tarte, where two of them made an incredibly close pass to an unsuspecting fishing boat! This whale never even surfaced, but lingered for a second alongside this boat, long enough for the people on board to move over and look straight down at it! In this photo you can see the white of the whale's chin and eyepatch right below the hull of the boat:

The T49As continue on their way

Two days later, on July 3rd, the T49As were in San Juan Channel again, this time heading north with the T65As and T75Bs. We saw them from a distance from Cattle Pass as they entered the channel and then as they milled in Griffin Bay, but we got our best look from the shores of the Friday Harbor Labs. We got there before the whales came into view so we had no idea which side of the channel they were on, or even for sure if they were still headed our way, so this was a very welcome sight:

Yes! Right place, right time

Again they gave some unsuspecting fishermen an incredible experience!

It was a short, but nice, pass.

Males T49A1 and T65A2, traveling together

We tried seeing them again from Reuben Tarte, but by that point in time they had crossed to the far side of the channel and were hard to see. So our last good look was this head lift by T49A1:

That catches you up on my whale encounters for the last week - now I'm ready to have more! :) Well, there was one more unusual superpod spotted on July 4th - at the parade in Friday Harbor. More than 130 Orca Protectors from 16 local organizations came together to march under the banner "Protect What You Love". We carried dorsal fins for every member of the Southern Resident Community of killer whales, plus ghost fins for the 7 whales we lost last year, and many salmon and other sea creatures. It was an impressive sight, taking up much of Spring Street as orca vocalizations played over an amplifier! This picture doesn't quite give the scene justice, but you'll have to imagine more of this stretched out in both directions. Our entry won the judge's choice award among all parade entries and was declared the unofficial overall favorite.

A superpod of Orca Protectors at the 4th of July Parade

As amazing as the transient encounters have been, this was a great reminder to everyone that this *should* be a peak time for visits from J-, K-, and L-Pods. We will not let their absence go unremarked upon, even if there are other whales around to enjoy.

August 26 - September 14: Catching Up On Whale Sightings!

Yikes, it's been too long since I've blogged again! Just because I've been super busy in all aspects of my life doesn't mean the whale sightings haven't continued to happen. Here's another catch-up blog with some photos and brief descriptions of some of the black and whites I've seen over the last three weeks...

On August 26th, the J17s and J22s spent the afternoon foraging on the west side of San Juan Island. The J17s were off Land Bank, where I got to see every member of the matriline over the course of an hour - including J28 Polaris, who was reported to be looking very thin. It was hard to see her in this condition, but after concerns that she might be living out her last days, I was very grateful to see her at all! This photo (taken from shore) shows depressions around her blowhole and eyepatches that are signs of a malnourished whale.

An unhealthy looking J28 Polaris on August 26th

Fast-forwarding ahead for a moment, J28 - as well her dependent calf J54 (just named Dipper) and older daughter J46 - are all still with us. While she still shows a bit of a depression, in my opinion she looks a little more rounded out like perhaps she's been gaining some weight. The fact that she's made it this long after looking in poor health attests to her fighting spirit! We're all still sending her and her little family lots of strong healing energy and love.

J28 Polaris (left) and a big tail slap from her daughter J46 Star on September 14

On August 28th, after hearing there were transients nearby, we jumped in the boat to get a glimpse of them near Spieden Island. It was the T36s and T99s, and while we were only with them briefly, we caught a little bit of action!

On the evening of August 29th, nearly all the Southern Residents made their way back into inland waters. They split up and spread out as they neared San Juan, so we only saw a few of them from Lime Kiln, but a small mixed group of Js and Ls gave us a nice close sunset pass:

L82 Kasatka and J31 Tsuchi

It was also cool to see a couple small resting groups offshore; resting is a behavior we're, for some reason, not seeing as much of as we used to. One of the groups was the J22 matriline:

J22 Oreo flanked by her sons J38 Cookie and J34 Doublestuf

On August 31st, I was thrilled to be able to share a short but sweet pass by some Ks and Ls at Lime Kiln with my visiting family. 

L86 Surprise

L118 Jade and the youngest member of L-Pod, L123 who was just named Lazuli

While they seemed to be in travel mode, we got treated to a spectacular cartwheel - I don't think I've ever photographed one from this angle before!

It was followed up a moment later by a big breach from L118 Jade:

L118 Jade

On September 2nd Jason and I headed over to Vancouver Island to visit family and take care of some things over there, and amazingly, some whales followed us! We got lucky to get a glimpse of two transients, T2B and T60D, make their way deep into Saanich Inlet. Then, we got even luckier after we traveled around the other side of the inlet and were in the exact right place at the right time to get a close shore-based pass right in Mill Bay! It was extra special to share it with Jason, who grew up going to that beach, but had never even seen orcas before this year.

12 year old male T60D

37 year old female T2B

As a result of being away there was then a week gap in whale sightings for me, remedied on September 10th when the Southern Residents came back in. Technically, it was a superpod - with all the Southern Residents here - and not the first such day of the year. But, I feel like I haven't experienced a true superpod yet this year. They've all been in inland waters at the same time, but SO incredibly spread out. For instance, on this day, spread from Trial Island to Active Pass! To me, a superpod brings up images of a party scene of 80+ whales in tight, intermingling groups...still waiting for that this year! Our September 10th encounter was more indicative of what it's been like this year. Over the course of an hour we saw 7 whales representing members of all three pods, but not even all members of a single matriline and no other fins in sight!

L110 Midnight

K26 Lobo

J42 Echo

On September 11th we saw a distant pass from Lime Kiln, the most notable moment of which was when a humpback whale came cruising north while the whales traveled south. The humpback, who I identified as BCY0409 Yogi, seemed to take exception to the fish-eating whales, trumpeting on every surfacing. Earlier in the day, some other whale watchers had documented humpback whales interfering on a transient killer whale attach on a Steller sea lion...I couldn't help but wonder if this was one of the same humpbacks, just ticked off at orcas in general that day even though the resident orcas posed no threat to it.

On September 14th we had an occurrence that used to be common but hasn't been so much any more - ALL of J-Pod and ALL of K-Pod traveling together! That really shouldn't be a shock, but it's because a rarity these days. J53, who was just named Kiki, was super active at the surface as she often is, and did several half breaches with her mouth open! It's not too often you get to see orca teeth!

J53 Kiki showing her teeth

As usual, K25 Scoter was right with mom!

K13 Skagit and K25 Scoter

We only caught the second half of the pass at Lime Kiln, but the vocalizations were so great we decided to hop in the boat to see if we could get more recordings further north. Wow, did we ever! Not only were the whales very vocal, but something about the water conditions made the calls really resonate so we could hear everything very clearly even from far away. At one point we set up about 1/4 mile off shore from whales foraging along the cliffs at Kellett Bluffs, and recorded for about 20 minutes - quite long for a boat-based recording! We hardly saw any dorsal fins during that time, as the whales were doing long dives and were pretty far away, but the calls made it sound like at times they were talking right into the hydrophone! Take a listen here for a sample of what we heard. 

L87 Onyx

It's been interesting to see such an increase in active foraging behavior over the last couple weeks. Whales aren't just stopping to opportunistically catch a salmon as they travel, they're hanging out in one area for long periods of time and regularly pursuing fish, apparent from their fast surface lunges. Hopefully that's indicative that they're finding more to eat, though their pattern has pretty much been one day up to the Fraser, one day down, one day out.

Even though he was far away at this point, I had to crop this photo because I love this perspective so much - the trailing edge of the dorsal fin of L87 Onyx!

K20 Spock

K20 Spock was one of the whales we saw actively foraging, but she took a moment out of her day to roll at the surface and wave her fins in the air while upside down!

As we tried to make our way back to port we were forestalled by the whales grouping up in Open Bay. While waiting for them to pass, it was neat to see them all together again after having been so spread out for the previous hour. There was a lot of intermingling among whales from both J and K Pods, and apparently they were saying their goodbyes? A bit later I heard K-Pod went back south, while J-Pod continued up to the Fraser River.

Some of the many whales together in Open Bay

Okay, last time I posted a blog post providing a mass update on belated whale reports, it was followed the next day by one of the most spectacular whale encounters of the summer that definitely needed it's own blog post! (In case you missed it, you can see that post here.) Fingers crossed the same thing repeats itself for me tomorrow :)

As we reach the back half of September, thoughts of a long, mostly whale-less winter loom ahead, so every whale encounter becomes extra special. You just don't know when it might be your last for the year! But I'm not ready to pack it in yet, as I'm hopeful for at least two more good weeks of "whale season"!

August 18th: One of the Best Evenings of the Summer

With my mom and nine year-old niece in town for a few days, I was hopeful the whales and weather would come together to get them out on the boat to see some orcas. The stars aligned on their second night here, when we had to go about 10 minutes from our dock to see our first whale - and that first whale was J2 Granny. We followed her for about 20 minutes; first she was bolting north, and then she stopped to forage. We saw her in fast pursuit of a salmon just underneath the surface....that old girl cna MOVE! Unfortunately the pictures of that didn't do it justice, so here's a picture of her at the surface instead:

J2 Granny

We could tell there were more whales to the south (that turned out to be an understatement - there were A LOT more whales to the south), so we drifted back that way. K25 Scoter passed us, and then the real fun began. Line after line of whales came by, and they all headed into Open Bay and were rolling around and socializing like crazy.

It was my first time trying to collect data from the boat without another OBI person there. Turns out it's pretty hard to drive the boat, take photos, record behavioral data, and operate the hydrophone all by yourself (another understatement!). It was a bit frantic, but I'm really glad I made the effort, in part because the vocalizations were out of this world. Here's just one minute of the more than 30 minutes I recorded that night.

We parked near Kellett Bluffs with several other boats watching the party in towards Open Bay, when all of a sudden a group surfaced right in and among the boats, swimming right by everyone who was watching at one point or another. One of the whales we got a close look at was K26 Lobo, who looked VERY tall so close to our boat. To give you a little perspective, my "zoom" was only at 22mm here:

K26 Lobo

The other whale who swam right at us was J42 Echo. I saw her surface facing us, maybe 50 or 75 yards away. Then where did she go? I happened to look down at just the right time. She cruised by us underwater, rolling on her side and looking up at us as she passed our boat. It's so brief and such a rare thing, but I LOVE it when they do that! She surfaced again right off our stern. (Don't worry - engine was off as soon as the first surprise whale popped up.)

We see a lot in the way of bad boat behavior out here in the summers, where ignorant or careless boaters drive at speed right over the top of the whales. In large part because of those incidents, and because these are endangered whales, there are laws in place forbidding people from intentionally motoring within 200 yards of a killer whale in Washington State. There are times though, like these, where the whales take matters into their own hands. I have to say I love it when this happens. There were maybe half a dozen boats here, all shut down for about 15 minutes, as the whales slowly meandered their way through. Everyone got a close look - all the people at the whales, and the whales at the people.

North of Henry Island, the whales split into numerous tight groups that spread out all over northern Haro. We hung out with the J16s (minus J26 Mike, who was off gallivanting somewhere else.)

J42 Echo, after showing a little curiosity and checking us out, remained in a playful mood. I think she surfaced many more times upside down or sideways than right-side up as her family traveled along. She did inverted tail slaps, pec slaps, a cartwheel, and a spyhop over the course of a few minutes.

J42 Echo Spyhop

J42 Echo tail slap next to little sister J50

Pec slap from J42 Echo next to mom J16 Slick

J42 Echo surfaces right-side up for once next to mom J16 Slick

It was so glassy calm out with such beautiful light, it was hard to leave! Especially while hanging out with two of J-Pod's newest members. This was why I wanted to get a boat - for evenings like these!

J16 Slick and her youngest, 9 month-old J50 - hard to believe she's that old already!