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.

Whales Everywhere! In October!

On Saturday I hopped out on Jim Maya's boat the Peregrine for an afternoon trip. We weren't even five minutes off the dock when we met up with a group of six transients: the T36As and part of the T124s. This group didn't have any adult males, but was two adult females, each with their two offspring.

T36A (left) and T36A1

T124D with one year-old T36A2

T124D, a 17 year-old female

This is probably my favorite orca shot of the day:

From left to right: T36A, T124D, and T124

We followed the whales across Open Bay and along Henry Island, where they started surfacing all in a tight group:

Last month I added a whale with red-necked phalaropes to my unofficial bird-with-orcas photo collection, and I got another new one on this day: an orca with a great blue heron! Can you see it?

We left the whales sooner than we might have otherwise because there were so many other cetacean sightings in northern Haro Strait. It was amusing as we turned to head west across the strait to see other whale-watching boats zig-zagging in all different directions as they headed from one group of marine mammals to another. Not all days are like that, but it sure is special when it is! Our target was a humpback whale, which we spotted just south of D'Arcy Island. On the way there I saw a few close pigeon guillemots, already in winter plumage:

After watching the one humpback whale (there were boats visible to the south watching two more transient orcas, T20 and T21), we headed up towards Turn Point where we heard another boat had a group of playful Dall's porpoise. When we got up there, we couldn't find a single porpoise, but one of our passengers spotted a blow: it was another humpback whale! In fact, it was two of them traveling together, a pair that had been seen earlier in the day but had been lost. (Obviously they weren't lost - the whale watch boats just lost them.)

Here's another shot a moment later in the same sequence, with the rear whale fluking and the front whale arching its back for a dive:

I didn't post any pictures of the first humpback whale because they were all way surpassed by the photos I took of these two. One of these whales was CS280, an animal identified from the Clayquot Sound ID guide (on the west side of Vancouver Island). Humpback whales are identified by the black and white markings on the underside of their tail flukes, so you can tell this is CS280 from this photo:

Humpback whale CS280

The other whale was BCY0324 (after writing this blog post, whale names like "J2" seem so much more manageable!). "BC" whales have been identified in British Columbia, and are given an X, Y, or Z depending on the amount of white on their flukes. This whale, however, is known locally as Big Mama. In the late 1800s and early 1900s humpback whales were hunted in the Salish Sea, but it didn't take long to exterminate the local population. For decades, humpback whales weren't seen in inland waters. All that started to change in 1999, when Big Mama was the first humpback whale to be regularly seen in the area. Humpback whale sightings started to become common in about 2005, and they're becoming more and more numerous every year. This is the best humpback whale year yet, with animals around all spring, summer, and fall. It was cool to meet the first whale that came back to the Salish Sea - maybe she's the one that spread the word about returning to these straits!

BCY0324 "Big Mama"

These whales sure didn't seem to mind our presence. Whenever they would go down for a longer dive we would remain parked, and they'd pop up again right near the boat. At one point, they surfaced about 15 yards off the starboard side!

 I took a short video when they were this close that I'll post at another time, too. Look how broad these guys look head-on (or in this case, behind-on):

When you see them at this range, it's obvious they're more than twice as big as an orca! They look huge! And those tails that they lift on a dive are just so photogenic:

I always love the more abstract shots, like this one, which is one of my personal favorites from the day. Big Mama is diving, and after arching her tail at the end of her last surfacing, she's bringing her tail back in the other direction here, the tips of her flukes still just visible before she paddles her tail to thrust herself forwards:

 

It doesn't look anything like the span between those two fluke tips is 10-15 feet in the above shot, but it is! 

By this time, the six transients we were with earlier had crossed to the west side of Haro Strait too, and we could see their blows in the distance behind this pair of humpbacks. Unfortunately the timing was never quite right to get both species in one shot! But wow, the lighting sure got beautiful.

All too soon, it was time to leave, and we watched as the pair of humpbacks continued on their way together:

One of my last views was of Big Mama fluking with the Olympic Mountains in the background - what a place I live!!!