November 10: A memorable day on the water

Things have been changing so much and so quickly in the Salish Sea; the transformations are astounding. When I first started spending time up here 20 years ago, both humpback and transient killer whales were rare sights. Now, they are around almost daily - even in November! With a friend up visiting for a long weekend, we headed out on the water with Maya's Legacy today and our sightings rivaled a good day during the "peak season" (whatever that is anymore!)

Early in the morning a report came in of the T18s near Orcas Island, and luckily they didn't travel too far too fast. We caught up with them at the west end of Spieden Channel, where they were first split into pairs with T18 Esperanza and T19 Spouter together, and T19 Mooyah and T19B Galiano about a mile further to the west.

18 year-old male T19C Spouter

A little while after we got there, the two groups merged and started making their way northwest up Haro. 

From left to right T19B Galiano, T18 Esperanza, and T19C Spouter

They were zig-zagging a bit, but their final surfacing before we left was perfectly lined up with the Turn Point l=Lighthouse. What a sight!

The T18s in front of the Turn Point Lighthouse

As we reversed course back through Spieden Channel we slowed down along Spieden Island. With its exotic wildlife, it rarely disappoints, but it was exceptional today. There were hundreds of Mouflon sheep, sika deer, and fallow deer out; more sika deer than I had ever seen, in fact!

Sika deer buck

It's also rutting season, which means there's plenty of drama unfolding! This male was bleating at these two very unimpressed females.

Male fallow deer bleating

We were distracted from the exotic wildlife when we spotted a family of river otters running along the hillside! They darted down into the water but 7 of them tried to all climb out on this little rock at the same time, some of them sneaking a curious look at us as we looked at them. One of the collective nouns for a group of otters is a "romp", and watching them today, you could see why!

A romp of sea otters

Down at Green Point there weren't any Steller sea lions hauled out, but there was a gang of them in the water. This one looks vicious in the photo, but he was just yawning.

We only got a quick look at the sea lions, because just across San Juan Channel was a humpback whale! We were shaking our heads in bewilderment at so many sightings on a chilly November afternoon! It was BCY0160 known as Heather, who seemed to just be doing circles.

BCY0160 Heather

It was just a short ride back to Friday Harbor from there, but I kept my camera out anyway, and I was glad I did! Eight ancient murrelets were flying amazingly fast, keeping pace with us for about a minute!

Ancient murrelets in San Juan Channel

By the end of the day, by my count, we had seen eight mammal species and about another dozen marine bird species - not too shabby!

Fall in the San Juan Islands

With all the education and advocacy efforts that I'm involved in year round now, there no longer seems to be a "slow season" to my year. Even as the days start to get shorter in the late autumn and fall and the whales around a bit less, there's plenty to do with writing articles and public comments and giving presentations, plus continuing to do book talks and other work with the Orca Behavior Institute. Regardless of the time of year, however, it's so important to me to regularly make some time to get out into nature with my camera, whether it be on the water or on land. And regardless of the time of year, there is so much to see and observe in the Salish Sea. Here are some highlights from the last six weeks or so.

Bald eagle in Spieden Channel

Ollie the sea otter at Race Rocks in the Strait of Juan de Fuca

Looking UP at the T46Bs in big swells in the Strait of Juan de Fuca

Laplong longspur - a life bird! - at American Camp

Close visit from a great blue heron at Land Bank's Westside Preserve

K33 Tika off the west side of San Juan Island

K34 Cali off Eagle Point with the Olympic Mountains in the background

One of the many hairy woodpeckers that visits our feeders year-round

Trumpet lichen, Cladonia spp.

Tiny mushrooms in the yard

Harbor seal pup at Roche Harbor

Gorgeous fall colors everywhere this year!

Bonaparte's gull in Mosquito Pass

March 18th: J-Pod in Boundary Pass

On the morning of March 18th word came in of lots of whales southbound in the Strait of Georgia. J-Pod had been up north for over a week; could this be them finally coming back down? Luckily for me there was still space available for Maya's Legacy trip out that afternoon to go and see! We headed north in nice calm waters to Boundary Pass, and it didn't take us long to spot our first fin: J27 Blackberry.

J27 Blackberry in front of Saturna Island

After spending a few minutes with him and the J41s who were in shore, we fell back to the next group made up of the J17s, J38, J45, and L87. They were all spread out and slowly moving down Boundary Pass. As a freighter came around the corner, they could have easily moved to get further away from it. Instead, J38 Cookie swam directly at it. For a moment, we thought maybe he would surf the freighter wake. He didn't, though we heard that later in the day L87 did on a different ship! It really makes you wonder: surely a vessel that loud would have some impact on their ability to hear and be heard, yet often they do nothing to avoid those or any other ships, or even seek them out. We are spending so much effort trying to make the seas quieter for these whales, and in the meantime some of them are choosing to swim right alongside the loudest ships in our waters!

J38 Cookie and freighter

Behind this group and inshore came some of the J16s. J26 Mike and J36 Alki were on our offshore side.

J36 Alki

We had moved from group to group in part to search from the J16s. Inshore of us were J16 Slick with her other two daughters: J42 Echo and J50 Scarlet. They went down for a dive, and then something amazing happened.

The trio of whales had been hugging the shoreline, but after a long dive, they surfaced maybe 75 yards away aiming right at us. We had a woman on board who is facing her second battle with cancer and whose favorite whale is J50 Scarlet. Slick and Scarlet came right alongside the boat. Surely it was a coincidence - but then again, I've seen things exactly like this happen so many times that you begin to wonder.

J16 Slick approaching

J50 Scarlet surfacing behind J16 Slick

J16 Slick and her youngest, J50 Scarlet

J16 Slick from behind

While we stayed parked with our engines off, the whole family group converged and surfaced on the other side of the boat.

Despite being overcast the lighting was exquisite, and I snapped some of my favorite pictures ever of J26 Mike.

Just beginning to surface

J26 Mike

J26 Mike

After this incredible pass, our time was up, and we slowly made our way back across Boundary Pass watching out for more of the overall very spread out whales. We ended up seeing whales from every matriline to confirm that all of J-Pod was present. On our way home, we got to head by Spieden Island, and while there's always something to see, this swing by had it all!

Hauled out harbor seals

The least common of the three exotic mammal species on Spieden: the Japanese sika deer

Family of river otters

While Mouflon sheep can be seen on the island year-round, we saw two things you don't get to see every day. One was the cute baby lambs that grace the island in the spring:

Tiny mouflon sheep lambs!

And the other was a pair down on the rocks. They do this sometimes to lick the salt, but these two seemed to be also eating the seaweed!

Of course, no trip to Spieden Island in the spring is complete without a visit with the Green Point Steller sea lions. The sun even peeked out to make for perfect lighting.

Throughout the afternoon J-Pod continued their way around Turn Point and down Haro Strait, and in the evening they were audible on the Lime Kiln and Orcasound hydrophones with some great vocalizations. Here's a clip of what we heard. 

All in all, you couldn't ask for more on a Sunday afternoon, let alone one in March! It was such an unexpected treat all the way around.

October 28-31: An Abundance of Salish Sea Wildlife

The weather this October has just been spectacular, right up through today, the last day of the month. We've had a few windy days and some heavy rain, but the number of clear, sunny days is certainly more than I remember having in recent years. This has provided a lot of opportunity to get out and enjoy this amazing place we live, and in the last few days the wildlife viewing has just been awesome.

On the evening of October 28th, we went out to Lime Kiln for sunset and enjoyed seeing all kinds of bird life passing by over the flat-calm seas.

Great blue heron

Tranquil autumn sunset

On the evening of October 29th, the transient killer whale family the T2Cs were making their way up San Juan Channel. A friend offered to let us hop aboard their boat out of Friday Hrabor, and the result was another memorable sunset!

T2C1 Rocky

When we had a view of Mt. Baker, we got two photo ops of two different cetacean species under the mountain. First, the orcas....

T2C1 Rocky under Mt. Baker

And then a pair of humpbacks passed by heading in the opposite direction!

Humpback whale under Mt. Baker

Then when we were stopped to get our last look before heading back to port, the whales surfaced after a dive right off our bow. 

T2C2 (the whale with scoliosis) and calf T2C4

Calf T2C4

The sunset on our way in

Then on October 30th (my birthday!) we took a hike down at Cattle Point. We came across a harbor seal with a huge salmon.

Nearby was a pair of river otters who were chowing down on forage fish. When one of them caught a larger rockfish, they both came ashore for a bit.

Otter on the upper right has a rockfish

While watching the otters, we also saw some harlequin ducks in perfect lighting.

Then today, the 31st, the sun continued and the waters were calm so we headed out for an afternoon boat trip. We originally thought we might see some sea lions, but they were the only thing we didn't see! We did find several groups of Bonaparte's gulls, which are one of my favorite birds to photograph.

This one has a little shrimp-like creature

A lot of the other winter birds are back too, including bufflehead, red-necked and horned grebes, and surf scoters. But the species that stole the show was a total surprise - the harbor porpoise! Don't get me wrong, I like harbor porpoise just fine, but more often than not they are very difficult to view. You may get just one or two glimpses and then they're gone. The one exception is when you get a large group actively foraging, and today we found just that with more than 100 of them off Green Point on Spieden Island. There were porpoise surfacing in every direction you looked.

We even saw some porpoise porpoising in the distance!

We shut down for a while to listen to their "chuffing" blows, and were rewarded with several close looks.

I've never seen (or photographed) a harbor porpoise swimming straight at me from such close range!

So concludes another beautiful month in the Salish Sea!