Two Weeks, Two Strandings

On December 4th came the sad news that a dead killer whale had washed up near Comox, British Columbia. It took a few hours before we knew the identity of the whale, and sadly we learned it was J32 Rhapsody, an 18 year-old female in J-Pod.

J32 Rhapsody breaches in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in August 2013

Often, when a whale dies, we may not know for weeks or months. For Southern Residents, who are always in such tight family groups, our best evidence of a whale death is typically the rest of its family returning to inland without it. It's unusual for us to know right when a whale dies, and even rarer for the body to be recovered. A large group of whales, presumably J-Pod, had been seen near Comox on December 3^rd. When she was first seen floating off the beach on the morning of December 4^th, Rhapsody had probably been dead less than 24 hours. 

It's sad when we lose any whale, but particularly when it's a breeding-age female, the age/sex class so critical if this population is going to recover. Earlier this season, rumors were running rampant that Rhapsody might be pregnant, because she looked particularly robust in several breach photos. She's always been a round whale, and there's no reliable visible signs of pregnancy on orcas, so we didn't know if she was really carrying a calf or not, but at 18 years of age, we were all surely hoping she was. The gift in her death will be the knowledge we could gain from her. Was she fertile or infertile? Was she pregnant, or has she ever miscarried? What's in her stomach? What are her toxin loads? What diseases does she carry? Why did she die?  

J32 Rhapsody right off the rocks at Lime Kiln in June 2014

A necropsy occurred two days later with dozens of people, including Ken Balcomb, in attendance. The first news to emerge from the day is that several of Rhapsody's teeth have been illegally sawed off and taken as souvenirs by someone overnight. The next news is that Rhapsody was indeed pregnant, with a full term calf. It's a devastating blow to this population, particularly because we later find out the calf was female. About a week later Ken Balcomb posts an informal summary of the necropsy; the official report is probably at least weeks away, since numerous lab tests are still pending. In short, the fetus preceded Rhapsody in death. She appeared to get an infection from difficulty in expelling the calf, and this ultimately resulted in her death.

As 2014 draws to a close, we have gone 28 months without a successful birth among the Southern Residents. L120 was the first known birth in two years, in September, but he/she only lived for seven weeks. With Rhapsody's death, we now know we've lost not only a breeding female, but another potential calf as well.

It's a tough blow. The Southern Residents are down to just 77 whales, lower than when they were listed as endangered in 2005. But the silver lining is that this seems to have sparked a new, stronger wave of dedication and activism, and as the momentum is building, I can only hope that we see big things happen in 2015, for the sake of the orcas. I will definitely be in the middle of it all, doing everything I can.

There are a lot of photos of Rhapsody lying dead on the beach, so if you want to see those you can easily find them elsewhere. I prefer to remember her as she was in life - a vivacious young whale, full of so much potential:

J32 Rhapsody, August 2014

A week to the day after Rhapsody's necropsy, I'm at home on a Saturday morning when I read on Facebook a report of a small dead killer whale washed up on South Beach, here on San Juan Island. It can't be, I tell myself. But with J-Pod having headed west the day before, the doubts creep in. I know it's probably a Dall's porpoise, but I have to go look. I brace myself on the drive down for what I might see.

I arrive at the same time as another local whale lover, and we're the first ones on scene. We see an eagle sitting on the beach next to a carcass and start heading that way. At first it looks like a sea lion, but as we get closer, I can see the pectoral fin and tail flukes sticking up in the air. My heart jumps to my throat for a split second as we get even closer, until I can see for sure that it is in fact a Dall's porpoise. It's an amazingly fresh animal - dead, but completely in tact. 

It's fascinating to see an animal like this up close. The fear that chased me down here starts to give way to wonder at seeing a cetacean like this up close.

It's an adult female, a little over six feet long and probably weighing about 300 pounds. There's no sign of trauma on her anywhere - no rake marks from transients, no wounds or signs of disease. The only thing I notice is that it looks like she hardly has any teeth!

I learn later that Dall's porpoise have very unusual teeth to begin with. The teeth are very small and are separated by growths called "gum teeth". So maybe this isn't so unusual, though I the expert that does the necropsy confirms that some of her teeth were indeed missing.

A crowd has begun to gather by this time, including some members of the stranding network and other curious whale folks who had the same fears I did when they heard the report. Among them is one of our local whale watch captains, who is celebrating a big birthday and has the extended family in town. This proves to be fortunate, because we have to find a way to get the animal down the beach to a truck so it can be transported to the Friday Harbor Labs where the necropsy will occur. A little ingenuity goes a long way, as we fashioned a sling out of some driftwood and straps out of someone's car and took turns carrying her the quarter-mile or so to the parking area.

As we load her into the back of a truck, I think we all feel a moment of sadness. It was a huge relief that we didn't have another dead killer whale on our hands, but the loss of this porpoise is a sad thing to witness, too.

Her necropsy occurs two days later, and while I don't attend, I get a full report from a couple friends. It turns out this stranded cetacean was pregnant, too, but with a male calf no where near full term. It's determined she was an older animal that died of a bad lung infection. Her stomach and intestines were empty, indicating that she probably wasn't able to eat for some time because of the disease.

We get the opportunity to learn an amazing amount from cetaceans when they strand, but after two such experiences in two weeks, I'm definitely ready for all of the local whales, dolphins, and porpoises to stay in the water, alive and well, where they belong!

Recovering From the Shock

With a long weekend last weekend we made plans with some friends to head down to Portland for a few days. We left on Friday afternoon and on the ferry to Anacortes, I saw a small group of western grebes (112), a year bird and also one of the species in San Juan County that has experienced the greatest declines in recent years, so it was a nice find for several reasons. We had decided from Anacortes to drive down Whidbey Island and take the ferry to Port Townsend where we spent the night. On the way we stopped at the Deception Pass Bridge to enjoy this sunset:

Saturday morning we continued down the Olympic Peninsula, making a couple of stops to look for birds and take in the surprising sunshine. Here at Potlatch State Park, we saw both common and Barrow's goldeneye (113) as well as wigeon, surf scoters, and common mergansers:

We got into Portland just in time to go to the hockey game we had tickets for and parked in our usual spot. Unfortunately, while we were there, my car got broken into, and a whole bunch of stuff got stolen, including my binoculars, camera gear, laptop, and new scope. We're still fighting the insurance battle, as they right now don't want to cover any of it, and in the meantime still recovering from the shock of losing so much coming to terms with the fact that people do that kind of thing to one another. Thankfully, pretty much everything that was taken was replaceable. For example, all but my last week's worth of photos were backed up at home, and nothing too personal was lost. It was a stark reminder of what's really important in life: it was, after all, just stuff.

Our weekend turned into a quite different one than we had expected, and we decided to take advantage of being in Portland to replace some of the things it would be hard to get on the island. It's taken a while to get back up and running which is why there's been such a gap in the blog postings. Obviously, I wasn't going to be happy for very long without a computer, camera, or binoculars, so we went about replacing those. We went to the Portland Audubon Society to replace the binoculars, and while there walked one of their trails where we ran into this lovely lady. I'm still looking for a wild great horned owl to add to the year list, but it was pretty cool to see her up close. She's unable to live in the wild and is kept there as an educational bird:

On the way back out to St. Helens we stopped at the Crown-Zellerbach Trail to do some more birding. It was the best part of the weekend. We saw nearly 40 species including a couple American bitterns (114) and a merlin (115).

On the plus side, if there is one at all, I got a slight upgrade to my camera and lenses. Here is the first picture I took with my new D7000. It's a similar camera body to the D90 I had but features some nice upgrades such as faster focusing and rapid-fire shooting, a weather proof body, and dual SD card ports:

Here's one of the next pictures I took while testing things out in my parents' yard:

While out and about playing with the new camera, I also saw a single band-tailed pigeon (116). It was an active morning in the yard with evening grosbeaks, chestnut-backed chickadees, dark-eyed juncos, Pacific wrens, and song sparrows out and about, too.

We headed back to San Juan Island a day later than planned and again had sunny weather for the trip back up. It was a bit dream-like to return to the small island community. While we do have crime here occasionally, it's a much more relaxed and trusting atmosphere. Here's a shot from the Anacortes ferry landing looking over towards Mt. Baker near sunset:

This weekend I got a chance to get out a little bit, and though the weather was fairly clear on Saturday, it was pretty windy, and as a result there wasn't much bird activity on the south end of the island. I did a bird survey at Fourth of July Beach, where as usual I didn't find any stranded sea birds, but I did see some remnants of the stranded pinniped I found there during my last survey:

Next up, there's nothing to do but move forward. The plan is to learn the ins and outs of the new camera and post some more test shots here soon!

Passing 100 and a Strange Stranding

Temperatures have been below freezing, but along with that has come clear skies and sunshine so I'll take it. I've gone out for a little bit of birding the last few days with year bird #100 in my sites, and turned up a lot of good species.

Friday afternoon we headed towards the south end of the island and the first bird I saw was the rough-legged hawk hanging out between American Camp and South Beach. Seems like he/she has decided to spend the winter here, as for the last month or so it's been within the same half mile or so. It's nice to see it so regularly here on the island.

I had added northwestern crow (88) during the week and the first year bird of the outing was a sharp-shinned hawk (89) flying over the road. At South Beach, there weren't very many birds out in the strait, but there were a nice variety of species represented, so I also added common loon (90), surf scoter (91), and Pacific loon (92) there. There were some very far away birds that might have been long-tailed ducks, but with the distance and lighting it was just too hard to tell for sure.

Things were fairly quiet bird-wise at Cattle Point, too. It was pretty breezy so maybe most were taking refuge from the icy temperatures somewhere else. It was just so nice to see some sunshine after days of dark and gray!!

 

Among the bufflehead in the pass were some harlequin ducks (93), and while we were watching them a pair of black oystercatchers (94) flew by. While scanning the gulls and cormorants over on Goose Island I also spotted a pair of black turnstones (95). There were some alcids out in the middle of the channel, too.....hmmm...pigeon guillemots still in winter plumage and....please come a little closer.....yes!! Ancient murrelets (96).

There have been some nice birds visiting at home, too. A flock of about thirty pine siskins has been regularly visiting the feeders, by far the largest group of birds we've hosted on the houseboat. Our regular house sparrows, chestnut-backed chickadees, red-breasted nuthatches, and dark-eyed juncos have also been around. The rock pigeons have become unwelcome regulars again, too. A belted kingfisher has made a few appearances, and one afternoon this female hooded merganser passed just feet off the houseboat:

Speaking of things passing just off the houseboat, Katie called us the other day with the amazing sighting that she was watching killer whales on the inside of Brown Island heading towards Shipyard Cove. That's right off the edge of our dock! Unfortunately I was at work so I missed them - just think of watching orcas right off my front porch! It's something I've actually dreamed about often and deep down believed I would see one day, so I hope this isn't the last time. It was a group of transients and they apparently made a kill just on the other side of Brown Island, so maybe they'll come back through the area. What's amazing is that they can pass so close to Friday Harbor and be more or less unnoticed! It's lucky that Katie saw them at all. I can easily imagine whales coming by a few hundred yards from where I'm sleeping and me having no idea it ever happened!

Despite missing that incredible sighting, we must carry on and see what else we can find. With that in mind I headed down to Fourth of July Beach to do a COASST survey and hopefully turn up some shorebirds for the year list. Not a single shorebird in sight on the beach, but out in the bay were a handful of white-winged scoters (97) and, a real surprise for me, a group of eight greater scaup (98). It's actually the first time I've seen that species in the county!

As per usual, there were no stranded sea birds on my stretch of the beach, but there was a very large something else stranded. From a couple hundred feet away I actually looked at it through bincoulars to see if it was an animal and I determined it was not, just a bundle of seaweed and other debri. I think I actually jumped when I got closer and noticed a rib cage sticking out of it! Turned out this mass belonged to a very decayed pinniped. Way to big to be a harbor seal, my first thought was maybe a small elephant seal, but perhaps Steller sea lion is more likely. I'm not sure, and I must admit I didn't want to investigate too closely:

There were all kinds of mew and glaucous-winged gulls around who didn't seem the least bit interested in investigating it, which I thought was odd. All I could make out were a pelvic bone, the rib cage, and part of the skull. Looks like the thing had some bites taken out of it, too.

Back to the living animals, however. While filling out my survey sheet in the parking flock a nice flock of about fifteen red crossbills (99) flew over. Hmm, 100 species was definitely in reach for the day now! I planned to drive by some of the inland lakes to pick of trumpeter swans on my way home, but I didn't really want such an "easy" species to be #100. I must be spoiled if I'm getting that picky with my bird list! I had no reason to worry, however, as while I was sitting at the steering wheel of my parked car deciding where to go next a hermit thrush (100) emerged from the bushes and perched on a branch right in front of me. What a treat!

After watching the thrush for a moment, I decided to cross to the other side of the road and go back to South Beach and try again for the long-tailed ducks. No luck on that front, but while I was scanning a small flock of four shorebirds flew in and landed up beach of me. I crouched down and they scurried their way towards me, amazingly passing within about 10 feet of me with apparently no concern for my presence whatsoever. They were a few very bold little sanderlings (101)!

Run!

Offshore in the (again) poor lighting I also managed to see a couple of red-necked grebes (102) in with the loons and scoters.

Next up I wanted to check out False Bay, and was surprised when a Cooper's hawk (103) flew in front of my car and perched on a roadside branch long enough for me to get a nice identification but not a photo. This was a "big miss" on last year's year list - I'm pretty sure I saw one, but too often just got enough of a glimpse to note "Accipter species" on my list and not whether it was a Cooper's or sharp-shinned. There seem to be lots of Accipters around right now, as I've gotten good looks at both species in the last two days as well as some quick glimpses of others.

It was junco central along False Bay Road, with easily more than 50 birds in and along the road in one short stretch. At the bay itself, things were pretty quiet except for the expected flock of northern pintail and mew gulls. From there, I went past the Wold Road pond where I added trumpeter swan (104). Being one of the few lakes that is bigger and hence not frozen over, there was other waterfowl activity here too including ring-necked ducks, gadwall, pied-billed grebes, mallards, and hooded mergansers.

All in all, despite feeling like there weren't that many birds out and about in the icy weather, it turned out to be a very productive few days' birding. I added 16 species to the year list, cruising past 100 and already closing in on last January's total of 105 species. Additionally, today's outing put the county list past 50 species on the year. Let's hope this weather holds so it's enticing to get out a lot more throughout the rest of the month!

The Sad Story of L112

L112 was first seen off Depoe Bay, Oregon in January 2009 during a rare winter Pacific Coast encounter with the Southern Resident Killer Whales. Many calves are born during the winter months, but they often aren't seen until the whales return to inland waters in the spring, so it was exciting to get the news of her birth in what for many orca lovers is a relatively whale-free month in January. 

L112 Sooke with mom L86 Surprise in 2009, the year Sooke was born

L112, later named Sooke through The Whale Museum's orca adoption project, was the second surviving offspring of L86 Surprise. Her brother, L106 Pooka, was four years her senior. The subgroup of L-Pod her matriline belonged to, a group of about 10 whales descended from the late L4 Sonar, is probably the one group of Southern Residents I'm least familiar with. Part of the reason is because it's a group made up entirely of females and juveniles with relatively indistinct saddle patches, so there's no "keystone" whale that makes it easy to identify the group as a whole. Another reason is because they also tend to spend a lot of out in the open ocean, even during the summer months, so they spend much less time in inland waters than most of the other whales. The new little calf Sooke, however, definitely stood out in the summers of 2009 and 2010.

L112, the smallest whale in the photo, surrounded by her L-Pod family in 2010

L112 tail slapping in the Strait of Juan de Fuca

All calves born to this endangered population of whales are a cause for celebrations, but there was an extra special reason to be thrilled about L112's birth: she was a girl. While the sex ratio of juvenile whales in J-Pod is even, there's a strong male-bias in K and L Pods. As of July 2011, there were 8 juvenile males, 2 juvenile females, and 4 juveniles of unknown gender in L-Pod. Sooke was one of the two females.

Sooke also gained some attention in the summer of 2010, when she became one of the first whales to receive two names as the whale naming disagreement between The Whale Museum and the Center for Whale Research came to a head. The Center named her Victoria.

One and a half year-old L112 swimming among her immediate family

Early in the morning of February 6th, 2012 ear-piercing sonar pings began being heard over the hydrophones on the westside of San Juan Island. It was mid-frequency active sonar being emitted by a Canadian naval ship. A full recap of the incident can be read here. It is not believed any killer whales were in Haro Strait at the time of the incident, though there had been several nighttime recordings over the preceding couple of days indicating Southern Residents had been in the area.

L112 (right) with L86 (middle) and L27 Ophelia (left)

On February 11th, a 12-foot female orca washed up dead on the shoreline of Long Beach, Washington. As a necropsy was performed the next day, it was confirmed that this whale was L112, and that she had died from massive trauma surrounding the head. It is rare for a killer whale to wash ashore, and even rarer for it to be a Southern Resident. Currently, it is unknown what caused the massive trauma, but the evidence doesn't suggest a vessel strike or predation. You can read Cascadia Research's necropsy report for more details. 

This has left the whale world wondering if the recent sonar incident might have played a role - cetaceans have shown massive head trauma as a result of sonar before. It's believed she was dead for about three days when she washed up, and it would take about two days for the whales to travel from the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Long Beach, which adds up to the five days that span the sonar incident and when she was found.

One thing that's amazing to me in the following photo of her is how big she is compared to the people around her. She looks so small in the pictures above, alongside her adult family members. Distance and size can be hard to judge for us humans on the water where there aren't many reference points - but a three year old killer whale is a pretty darn big animal!

As sad as her death is, it does provide a huge opportunity to learn about things like genetics, contaminants, disease. Until the cause of death is determined, however, I'm especially concerned for her family members - hopefully it wasn't the sonar, so they aren't experiencing any adverse affects from it. If it was the sonar, however, hopefully this will become a rallying point to help keep these exercises out of critical whale habitat.

Stranded Harbor Porpoise

This afternoon I was walking at American Camp with a friend when we came across a bald eagle feeding on a harbor porpoise carcass. This is something I've never seen before! After our walk I went back with my camera in hand. There were four eagles nearby, but unfortunately none of them were feeding at the time. I took advantage of the feeding break to take a closer look at the adult porpoise.

I've written before about my mixed fascination at/aversion to having the chance to look at dead animals, in relation to the beached bird surveys I do. While it's not something I particularly enjoy, it is an opportunity to look at a wild animal closer than is possible when they are alive. This porpoise was the same type of experience for me. While the open innards of the porpoise were pretty gross, it was still amazing to see this animal up close. I was particularly fascinated with the tail, which is just a beautiful shape:

Here's a close-up of the face. In addition to being amazed at the tiny teeth in the mouth, I thought the striations in the gray coloration, particularly around the mouth, were pretty remarkable. (Click on the image to get a better look.)

Other than the eagles, the birdy highlight of the visit was the two pairs of black oystercatchers on the nearby rocks. There were some sea birds well offshore, including a flock of red-breasted mergansers and ten surf scoters, but most of them were too far away and too backlit to be identified.