Let the season begin!

After one of the coldest, wettest winters in recent memory, we've all been more than ready for spring to arrive! I had to send my camera off for some maintenance, so was worried the nice weather, spring migrants, and whales might start to show up while I was unable to document them! As luck would have it, I was down and out with the flu and there were many rainy days while my camera was gone, so I didn't miss much. A few spring migrants did begin to arrive, but Jason let me borrow his camera for our photo year list challenge.

First rufous hummingbird of the year - photo year bird #130

Thankfully, my camera returned in time for this weekend, because this morning for the first time in way too long the conditions were right to hop on the boat and see some whales! We met up with the T36s and T46s near Waldron Island and followed them over towards San Juan Channel.

The most impressive whale in the bunch was the huge 14 year old male T46E:

They were in quick travel mode until they reached O'Neal Island in San Juan Channel, when they suddenly fanned out and presumably made a kill, as they started circling and becoming more active at the surface while gulls came down to partake in the feast. Meanwhile, we saw some other boats further south in the channel and soon saw blows - they were with a second group of whales, heading towards us!

What followed was the closest thing to a transient "greeting ceremony" that I've ever seen - the group we were with lined up at the surface, hanging there as the other whales (later determined to be the T99s) approached. The two groups briefly faced each other about 20 yards apart, and then the surface erupted with breaches, cartwheels, dorsal fin slaps, pec slaps, spyhops, and tail slaps. They continued their rambunctious behavior as they started traveling again south down San Juan Channel, and quite frankly, they were behaving more like residents than Ts!

The two groups merge! Newly arriving whales on the left face off with the whales we were with, who started lots of splashing behaviors

The dark shoreline of San Juan Island made a perfect back drop for those huge blows!

As the whales continued on towards Friday Harbor, we peeled off and went over to check out the wildlife on Spieden Island. Amazingly, there were about 50 Steller sea lions at Green Point - 35 hauled out and easily another 15 in the water.

Steller sea lions at Green Point

We also saw some good bird activity including pigeon guillemots, marbled murrelets, long-tailed ducks, pelagic and double-crested cormorants, harlequin ducks, and rhinoceros auklets.

Rhinoceros auklet in Spieden Channel

On the terrestrial side of things, the Mouflon sheep were out in full force on Spieden, and some females had some very young lambs in tow!

That all made for a pretty spectacular day, but late in the afternoon we got word that J-Pod was vocalizing on the Lime Kiln hydrophones. Where did they come from?! After listening to some great vocals we just had to head out there and take a look. From Lime Kiln we spotted about 8 whales several miles offshore milling back and forth. They were too far for photos, but any day you see both resident and transient killer whales is a pretty spectacular day!

J-Pod has been around a fair amount in the last few weeks, not spending a lot of time here but transiting through the islands on a somewhat regular basis. My fingers are crossed that they keep it up and it turns into a whale-filled spring. It has certainly started out on a great note!

August 26th: Ts Everywhere!

On Tuesday, August 26th I got to go out on the zodiac the Western Explorer with a friend who was about to leave after spending the summer interning here. With some residents having gone out west the day before and others way up north out of range, first thing in the morning the whale report was looking a little questionable. I had a good feeling about the day, however, and it turned out my gut reaction was right. There were transients ("Ts") all over the place!

When we left the dock in mid-afternoon, one group of Ts was right outside Friday Harbor! It was the T65As, a group that has been around a lot this summer.

The T65As right outside Friday Harbor

With quite a few boats on scene and reports of another, larger group of transients not too far away, we just took one quick look at the T65As then headed east through the San Juan Islands towards Rosario Strait. As we got close, the whales fanned out into no fewer than four different groups as they rounded the eastern tip of Orcas Island. I've been watching whales here for over ten years, but this was something I had never seen before - we were with one group of transients, and just about everywhere you looked you could see another group! It was more like watching a spread out group of resident matrilines.

Turns out the whales were not in nice, orderly groups however. The different transient family groups present were all mixed up, and with no adult males present (just about 20 transient females and juveniles!) it proved difficult to get IDs, both while we were there and later from my photos. The best as I could piece it together, present were the T34s, T36s, and T37s, but I don't think that's enough whales to account for everyone there, so I think there was at least one more family mixed in there too!

A mixed group of transient killer whales in Rosario Strait

Things lined up perfectly for this shot:

Transient killer whales (I believe the T37As) in front of Mt. Baker

I love being on the water late afternoon/early evening - the lighting is so great. And I got to do it twice in three days!

Groups were just meandering this way and that - they didn't seem to have any destination in mind, but they didn't really seem to be hunting either, at least not as far as we could tell. Right before it was time to leave, three of the groups met up and gave us one last beautiful surfacing.

Probably my favorite photo of the afternoon

This one was taken a split second later

T37A on the right

It's always interesting to think about residents and transients interact, or at least how they share the habitat. There are definitely days we have both ecotypes in the area, but it also seems like at times its either one type or the other that's prolific throughout the Salish Sea. This was definitely a transient day! There were even more groups than the five that we saw, with no residents around at all. I estimated there were probably about 30 transients around! Other days we have three or four groups of residents and no one finds any Ts! I really do wonder what they think of each other.

It's hard to believe we're already approaching September. I'm definitely not ready for the days to be getting shorter, but traditionally September is one of my favorite months of the year here, including having some of the best whale sightings! I can't wait to see what this September will bring.