August 25: The T34s, T36As, T37, and T37Bs

On the afternoon of August 25th we heard about killer whales near Waldron Island, so I headed out to Reuben Tarte on the northeast side of San Juan Island to take a look. When I first got there, there were 2 groups, both pretty far away: one near Flattop and one near Jones. Suddenly the group from Jones, which had been aiming south down San Juan Channel, porpoised over to Spieden Channel, and it looked like both groups would go west and out of sight. Something made me pause for a couple minutes before leaving, however, and am I ever glad I did! Suddenly the two groups merged and on their next surfacing where aiming right for the rocks where I was standing! It was the T34s, T36As, T37, and T37Bs - 11 whales.

The above two photos look so much like a group of resident killer whales approaching shore at Lime Kiln. It's still amazing to me that we are having these sorts of encounters here so regularly now with transients! 

It looked like they were going down on a longer dive right as they were reaching us, so I was afraid they would bypass us on shore entirely. Then I looked down and saw the unmistakable form of a killer whale underwater right off the rocks!

This was T34A, who was perhaps sent out on seal patrol, as she went up and back along the rocks, not surfacing until her return trip.

T34A

That one close pass would have been enough to make the encounter a special one, but the rest of the whales weren't far behind. Here is a bit of an odd combination in, from top to bottom, T36A1, T37, and new calf of this year T34B.

An odd combo from top to bottom: T36A1, T37, and calf T34B

I had seen T34B a couple times this year, but not until I saw it in this lighting did I realize how pale and mottled he or she is! Really bizarre coloration.

Odd coloring and pigmentation visible on T34B, who was traveling here with T37

The three T37Bs also came in fairly close and all surfaced together:

From left to right: T37B, T37B2, and T37B1

The whales spent some time milling near O'Neal island before getting too far away to see very well, giving me about 45 minutes of observation time from shore - quite a lot for Ts who often pass quickly right on by! This group continued south down San Juan Channel and passed Friday Harbor, but then I heard from a friend that they flipped and were coming back north. The late afternoon timing was perfect for us to jump on the boat and meet up with them again in nearly the same spot I saw them earlier, but now going north. It looked like they might take Spieden Channel, but for the second time that afternoon they doubled back and on this occasion ended up going on the north side of Spieden Island west through New Channel. Talk about a spectacular setting for an evening encounter!

There's just something about backlit blows, something made even more perfect with a black backdrop.

For the whole time I observed them on this day they kept splitting into two groups, nearly coming together and merging into one group, then splitting again, with members of the T36As and T37 regularly switching groups. It made it hard to keep track of who was where, but interesting to speculate on what they might be doing and why.

After giving us those awesome backlit blows, they switched to the other side of the channel where the lighting was equally amazing but totally different.

Yet again after no more than a minute or two they split into 2 groups, and at first we followed one as they made their way west into Haro Strait. The other one was way inshore towards Johns Pass and Stuart Island, so before we left we went over there to see what they were up to. It was a group of 5 of them and they seemingly were on the hunt, perhaps pinning a seal to the bottom as they kept taking turns diving and were circling in the same spot for more than 20 minutes.

T36A1

If I had to guess, I would say their hunt was successful; we started seeing some surface activity, but never anything definitive like birds coming in for meat scraps.

August 30: Superpod in Unreal Lighting

On August 30th I got out to Lime Kiln in the middle of several large groups of the superpod were heading north. They were quite a ways offshore, but the sheer number of them in one group was pretty darn impressive:

With a few friends in town, the conditions were right to meet up and head out on the boat to show them some whales before sunset. As intriguing as the lighting was at Lime Kiln, it got even more amazing as we followed the whales towards Stuart Island. They were now spread out all the way across Haro Strait in smaller groups, and no matter which way I looked I could see whales in amazing light.

Can you spot the orca?

A little easier to see the whale in this one

J2 Granny

K25 Scoter - no filter needed

Heck, on the way back in, the scenery was pretty darn spectacular even without the whales in it ;)

August 22nd: The L54s Arrive!

On the evening of August 21st I had heard a lot of whales were inbound, so I made it an early morning on the west side of San Juan Island. At first only three or four whales came up as far as Land Bank and were milling around, but after they decided to go north it became apparent a lot more whales were coming. They passed by quickly in huge groups - there were so many whales I knew we had members of all three pods, but they passed so fast I wasn't sure who exactly was here.

The J16s were one of the closer groups to shore. I realized I didn't post any pictures of J36 Alki and J52 in my last blog post with the J16s, so here are two pictures to make up for that:

J36 Alki and J52

J36 Alki and J52

I also saw the J22s - always nice to see this trio, known as "The Cookies":

From left to right: J34 Doublestuf, J38 Cookie, and J22 Oreo

It was too tempting not to jump in the boat and catch up with these guys again further north, so I picked up a friend and off we went. Our timing was perfect. We got to Open Bay right when a huge group containing most of J- and K-Pods did. They weren't quite synchronized in their surfacings though, so my photos don't really capture how many whales were there!

That's J2 Ganny in the center

You can't quite see it in this small version of the photo, but the people on this boat are fully in awe of this huge spyhop by J31 Tsuchi. One person is clapping their hands together and all four have their mouths open:

Beauty of a spyhop by J31 Tsuchi

We've gotten in the habit of talking about Js and Ks and not even bothering to mention what is now a given: that L87 Onyx is there. After losing his mother, he continues to be an L-Pod transplant, the only time something like this has been witnessed in the 40 years these whales have been carefully studied.

L87 Onyx, at home with the Js and Ks

After this group passed, we hung out off Kellett Bluff to watch two more groups approaching. The first group contained what I've taken to calling the Greater L4s - a large part of L-Pod that doesn't include the L12 or L54 sub-groups. But there were still a few more whales coming. Were these the L12s? Something didn't quite match up....

L88 Wavewalker and L84 Nyssa

It took me a minute to believe my eyes when I saw these big boys, and not just because they've both grown since last year - it was L84 Nyssa and L88 Wavewalker! These two males, the last remnants of the L9 and L2 matrilines respectively, have hooked up with each other and with the rogue L54 matriline that rarely visits inland waters. While all the whales in this sub-group had been accounted for in the Strait of Juan de Fuca earlier in the season, August 22nd marked the first day of 2015 where they made it all the way into Haro Strait. Last year I only saw them once.

L88 Wavewalker by the Center for Whale Research boat

I only realized this later, but I thought L54 Ino got major style points for waiting to show up in any of our Orca Behavior Institute research until encounter #54.

L54 Ino

The lighting wasn't the greatest, but it was still a great pleasure to spend time with this family group, the most unfamiliar to me of all the Southern Residents. In addition to L88 Wavewalker, L84 Nyssa, and L54 Ino and her two offspring, I found it really interesting that the two whales traveling with them were the L26s, the other smallest remaining L-Pod matriline made up of L92 Crewser and L90 Ballena. These seven whales represent all that remains of four different matrilines, but they've banded together in a makeshift family of their own.

L84 Nyssa and L92 Crewser

In general the Southern Residents are seen so much it doesn't take us long to determine a whale's gender, even though as juveniles that requires seeing the underbelly of the whale, and knowning whose underbelling you're seeing. The one exception is L117 Keta - we still don't know if this whale is male or female. Fingers crossed for female, because L-Pod has a real lack of young females, and if it's a male, there's a likelihood the L54 matriline will end.

L54 Ino and her youngest, L117 Keta

After a time these whales merged with the rest of L-Pod. As we left them they were still heading north along the shoreline of Stuart Island.

It turns out almost everyone was here. Only the L12 sub-group was missing. That meant there were 71 whales present - not bad! But we were still waiting for our first full-fledged superpod of the summer...

August Adventures: Outer Islands, Pond Sleuthing, Sunrises, and More

As much as we complain about our summer weather (or lack thereof) here in the San Juan Islands, we've really had a pretty summery August with lots of sunshine and warm days - at times even bordering on hot. In the last post I updated on a great extended weekend of orca sightings, but here are some of the other things I've been looking at this month...

On August 4th, my work sponsored a party aboard a local barge, complete with live music, catered food, and sand on the ground of the boat. We made a stop at Stuart Island, one of the outer islands I've long wanted to visit. While some people swam in the harbor, others of us took advantage of the short time at anchor to hike out to the Turn Point Light Station at the northwest end of the island. We had to hoof it to make it there and back, but it was worth it to visit a spot I've long seen from the water but never set foot on from the land side.

Here's a view of it from the water - taken today actually!

I imagine it would be a great spot to view the whales from shore; living up to its name, the whales often make a sharp turn there to go from Haro Strait to Boundary Pass, passing close to shore. There weren't any whales when we there, which was probably a good thing because I would have missed the boat back to watch them, but I'll definitely have to go back sometime to spend some more time there and try to see whales. It was still a pretty spectacular view that late afternoon, though.

I've been spending some early mornings on the west side of the island hoping to get one of those quiet, glassy water whale passbys. That hasn't happened yet, but I've seen some other cool stuff. One morning, this fledgling bald eagle chick flew up and landed - right in the top of a little madrone tree. It was kind of an awkward perch for an eagle, but he tested his wings a bit before taking flight again:

Yesterday morning when I was getting ready to head out, I paused to take in the sunrise from right here at our marina. It was pretty spectacular to see it coming up right over the side of Mt. Baker:

The activity at the bird feeders here on the houseboat seems to have really slowed down, though I did see my first chestnut-backed chickadees at the feeders in what seems like months. This wasn't a feeder visitor, but one afternoon a great blue heron perched right on the walkway railing just off our front porch:

On a warm Sunday afternoon I spent some time walking around a pond on a friend's property. Lots of insects were enjoying the sunny day, including these dragonflies:

Eight-spotted skimmer (Libellula forensis)

Cardinal meadowhawk (Sympetrum illotum)

There were also lots of damselflies, and this single butterfly was a beauty:

Hoary comma (Polygonia gracilis)

The the abundance of bullfrogs were interesting to look at, but unfortunately are having what I'm sure is a pretty negative effect on some of the other local wildlife. Native to the eastern US, they are an invasive species here in the west, where they eat anything smaller than themselves including the tadpoles of most native frog species.

Today, despite a lack of orca reports, we went out on the Western Prince, the boat I used to work on. We didn't see any cetaceans, but there were tons of bald eagles all over the place. We easily saw more than 20 throughout the course of the morning. 

The most interesting was an adult feeding on what looked like a dead harbor seal pup on the north side of Spieden Island. Right above it on the rocks were one of the several small herds of Mouflon sheep we saw right along the beach. I know the sheep like to lick the salt of the intertidal level, but several were actually trailing pieces of seaweed from their mouths while they were walking! The eagle's kidn of hard to see, but it's in the middle of the bottom of the picture - you can just make out the gray lump its sitting on:

We saw some of the other Spieden Island "native" wildlife, including these male European fallow deer:

We saw tons of harbor seals hauled out everywhere, too, since it was a pretty low tide. There wasn't a lot in the way of sea birds, though I did spot two kinds of gulls, a pair of marbled murrelets, black oystercatchers, pigeon guillemots, rhinoceros auklets, and pelagic cormorants. It was neat to see the cormorants had returned to a former nesting site of theirs right by Turn Point on Stuart Island. Those little ledges sure don't look like they offer much in the way of nesting space to me, but to each his own!

As you can see here, they don't form huge nesting colonies like some other sea birds, but do aggregate in small groups. They roam around from year to year, too, which perhaps explains why this site has been empty for several years prior to this one.

There - I think that catches me up a bit on sharing pictures from this month! There are more adventures in store, and I'm hoping more whales and nice weather too, so I'll try to get back to posting in a more timely manner.