August 18th: One of the Best Evenings of the Summer

With my mom and nine year-old niece in town for a few days, I was hopeful the whales and weather would come together to get them out on the boat to see some orcas. The stars aligned on their second night here, when we had to go about 10 minutes from our dock to see our first whale - and that first whale was J2 Granny. We followed her for about 20 minutes; first she was bolting north, and then she stopped to forage. We saw her in fast pursuit of a salmon just underneath the surface....that old girl cna MOVE! Unfortunately the pictures of that didn't do it justice, so here's a picture of her at the surface instead:

J2 Granny

We could tell there were more whales to the south (that turned out to be an understatement - there were A LOT more whales to the south), so we drifted back that way. K25 Scoter passed us, and then the real fun began. Line after line of whales came by, and they all headed into Open Bay and were rolling around and socializing like crazy.

It was my first time trying to collect data from the boat without another OBI person there. Turns out it's pretty hard to drive the boat, take photos, record behavioral data, and operate the hydrophone all by yourself (another understatement!). It was a bit frantic, but I'm really glad I made the effort, in part because the vocalizations were out of this world. Here's just one minute of the more than 30 minutes I recorded that night.

We parked near Kellett Bluffs with several other boats watching the party in towards Open Bay, when all of a sudden a group surfaced right in and among the boats, swimming right by everyone who was watching at one point or another. One of the whales we got a close look at was K26 Lobo, who looked VERY tall so close to our boat. To give you a little perspective, my "zoom" was only at 22mm here:

K26 Lobo

The other whale who swam right at us was J42 Echo. I saw her surface facing us, maybe 50 or 75 yards away. Then where did she go? I happened to look down at just the right time. She cruised by us underwater, rolling on her side and looking up at us as she passed our boat. It's so brief and such a rare thing, but I LOVE it when they do that! She surfaced again right off our stern. (Don't worry - engine was off as soon as the first surprise whale popped up.)

We see a lot in the way of bad boat behavior out here in the summers, where ignorant or careless boaters drive at speed right over the top of the whales. In large part because of those incidents, and because these are endangered whales, there are laws in place forbidding people from intentionally motoring within 200 yards of a killer whale in Washington State. There are times though, like these, where the whales take matters into their own hands. I have to say I love it when this happens. There were maybe half a dozen boats here, all shut down for about 15 minutes, as the whales slowly meandered their way through. Everyone got a close look - all the people at the whales, and the whales at the people.

North of Henry Island, the whales split into numerous tight groups that spread out all over northern Haro. We hung out with the J16s (minus J26 Mike, who was off gallivanting somewhere else.)

J42 Echo, after showing a little curiosity and checking us out, remained in a playful mood. I think she surfaced many more times upside down or sideways than right-side up as her family traveled along. She did inverted tail slaps, pec slaps, a cartwheel, and a spyhop over the course of a few minutes.

J42 Echo Spyhop

J42 Echo tail slap next to little sister J50

Pec slap from J42 Echo next to mom J16 Slick

J42 Echo surfaces right-side up for once next to mom J16 Slick

It was so glassy calm out with such beautiful light, it was hard to leave! Especially while hanging out with two of J-Pod's newest members. This was why I wanted to get a boat - for evenings like these!

J16 Slick and her youngest, 9 month-old J50 - hard to believe she's that old already!

July 22-26: Windy, whale-filled days

On July 22nd, many members of J-, K-, and L-Pods were hanging out on the west side of San Juan Island - unfortunately just out of reach! I could see them from shore through binoculars, but most of them were in large, highly social, slow moving groups quite a ways away. A few whales did finally come up as far as Lime Kiln, including K12 Sequim who did a couple of fantastic breaches:

The (very robust looking) K12 Sequim

I kept switching where I was watching from on shore, hoping to end up in the right place at the right time as it kept looking like the whales *might* come closer. It was brief, but finally I was, as J26 Mike surprised me out of no where off Land Bank. He was traveling with some K-Pod whales, and caught himself a kelp flag to fly along the way.

J26 Mike off Land Bank

Heavy winds kept us off the water most of the week, but we had one of the biggest early supporters of the Orca Behavior Institute in town, and we really wanted to get her out on the water. Luckily, on her last full day on the island, the conditions were right to get out and see some Js and Ks at Open Bay.

J36 Alki and J52

A big breach by K44 Ripple

The whales were super vocal, and we got some of our best recordings of the season during this encounter. You can listen to a clip of what we recorded here. 

On July 25th, with friends in town visiting, we caught up members of all three pods again as they cruised by Lime Kiln late in the day. It was a blustery evening and the whales were spread all the way across Haro Strait, with some close and many very far away.

One thing I love about Lime Kiln - aside from the fact that it's the best place to see whales from shore - is that it's the center of a real community of whale watchers. As a regular visitor for the last 15 years, it turns out I've come to know a lot of the people who spend time there! During this passby, I think I knew about 15-20 people who were on the rocks behind me! One friend snapped this shot that shows a couple of us on the rocks:

Lime Kiln whale watchers: Melissa, Jill, me :)

As per usual (for this summer anyway), the K14s were traveling with J2 Granny and her group.

K14 Lea

I was very thankful when one whale flew by right off the rocks, giving our out-of-town visitors a quick glimpse into the magic of Lime Kiln.

A quick hello from L82 Kasatka

July 12th: Js, Ks, and Ls, in Haro (OBI #24)

On July 12th we again got to meet up with whales right outside of Mitchell Bay, this time getting on scene right after some newly arrived whales met up with the group of Js and Ks we had seen the day before. The first whales we saw were members of the K12s and K13s.

A large group of J- and K-Pod whales then met up and got tight to the shoreline along San Juan Island. We heard there might be more whales to the south, a suspicion fueled by the fact that the whales all started porpoising in that direction. We were quite a ways offshore, but it was still impressive to see so many of them moving so quickly.

An offshore look of what was an impressive pass at Lime Kiln - between 20 and 30 whales porpoising by close to shore

Offshore a little south of Lime Kiln we met up with some of "the rest" of the whales. The first ones we saw were L47 Marina and L115 Mystic, confirming that at least part of L-Pod had come in too.

Hello L47 Marina - haven't seen you in a while!

Down by False Bay we came across even more whales, and by now all the different groups seemed to be meeting up. At first some of them seemed to be foraging, including members of the J16s and L4s. We just sat watching them for more than half an hour, and at one point L27 Ophelia surprised us by surfacing right off our bow!

L27 Ophelia, estimated to be about 50 years old

We like the opportunity to sit for an extended period with our engines off, because it gives us the chance to make longer hydrophone recordings of the whales. As these whales foraged and then headed offshore, it gave us a chance to make one of our longest boat-based recordings of the season at over 20 minutes.

There are several reasons we're keen to collect data from the whales both from the boat and from shore. Each gives us a different perspective: at shore, we're in one spot, and get to watch the whole group of whales go by, getting an idea of the entire group from a point location. On the boat, by contrast, we can stay with one group of whales for a longer period of time, watching as they chance what they do as they traverse their habitat. The recordings are also very different. At Lime Kiln, we get long recordings that capture all the vocals of the whole group as they go by, but it can be difficult to parse out which whales you're recording from or to record from one group for very long, as they tend to just swim right on by. On the boat, we can deploy the hydrophone for shorter periods of time - often less than 5 minutes - but can have a much better idea of who we're recording from. Our longer boat recording from July 12 captured the vocals of many groups of whales, but the end of the recording is one example where the only whales near us were the K22s. Some of our research questions are about the vocalizations at the matriline (instead of pod) level, and recordings like this are invaluable for those types of studies.

Check out a clip of the K22s on our Sound Cloud here. (Also, you can now follow Orca Behavior Institute on Facebook!)

K33 Tika surfacing while we were recording his vocalizations

V4: A Universal Killer Whale Call?

The Ways of Whales workshop today was successful, with over 100 people in attendance. There were some great talks: Brad Hanson talked about satellite tagging, John Calambokidis talked about new insights into North Pacific baleen whale stocks, a former Sea World trainer gave her views on last year’s tragic death of a trainer, and Suzanne Chisholm shared a project she is working on about the dolphin captures in Taiji. The lecture I gave was about killer whale acoustics, including some background on call usage and also tips for listeners on how to figure out which pod they are listening to when they hear the whales on the streaming hydrophones at www.orcasound.net.

One other bit of information I shared was about a study I got to participate in last year that resulted in a paper that was just published by Nicola Rehn and colleagues in a natural science journal journal*. When I was contacted by a colleague of mine, Andy Foote, last year, he asked me to listen to several dozen orca calls and place them into categories based on how I thought they should be defined.

After I went through all of the calls and organized them into call types, he told me what the study was about: they believe that there is an orca call, that they’ve termed V4, which is universal across not only different killer whale populations, but different killer whale ecotypes (resident, transient, offshore). Indeed, I had placed all of the proposed V4 calls into the same category, even though they came from five different populations of whales: the Southern Residents, the Northern Residents, the Kamchatka Residents, the Pacific offshores, and the Bering Sea transients. Eight other independent observers came up with similar classifications, justifying the researchers’ belief that this may be a universal call type.

This finding is interesting for two reasons. First of all, it’s the first demonstration of an overlap of call types between different populations of orcas that until now were believed to have completely distinct dialects. Second of all, the calls are primarily recorded in high excitement states, regardless of the population the call came from. For the residents and offshores, the call occurred in social situations, and for the transients, the call was recorded after the group had made a kill. The evidence points to this being an innate, universal call type that is highly variable but still categorizable – much like human laughter or crying.

The V4 call is often heard among Southern Residents and was termed S10 in the 1980s by John Ford. I’ve always described this call to others as sounding like the whales are laughing, and it turns out this may not be so far off! Here’s a sample of the call so you know what to listen for if you’re tuning in to the hydrophones:

*More information can be found in the paper: Rehn et al (2011). “Cross-cultural and cross-ecotype production of a killer whale ‘excitement’ call suggests universality”. Naturwissenschaften. (98):1-6.

Upcoming Lecture: November 5th

For those of you that are nearby, I encourage you to attend The Whale Museum's Marine Naturalist Gear-Down on Friday, November 5th from 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM a the Friday Harbor Grange. There is always a great series of informative lectures at these events, so there is a lot to be learned. I've been invited to give a talk at this one, so you should definitely make sure to be there!

"Which Pod Is That? An Introduction to Listening to Southern Resident Killer Whales"

by Monika Wieland

When Monika first came to the San Juan Islands, she started as a research intern for The Whale Museum and spent several summers at Lime Kiln Lighthouse recording and listening to the Southern Resident orcas. She went on to study their vocalizations further in her undergraduate thesis at Reed College, and as a result of her research published a paper in the journal Marine Mammal Science. Recently, more and more people have had the opportunity to listen to the Southern Residents via www.orcasound.net. In this talk, Monika will share some of her knowledge of killer whale calls and will give you tips on how to figure out which pod you are listening to. She will also have CDs available with pod-specific vocalizations, so you can take some recordings home and learn the calls better.

Western Screech-Owls

Western screech-owls are the only owl that I commonly hear (and occasionally see) in the Portland area. One year we had them nest in a tree right in our front yard. From the neighbor's second story window you could see one of the parents sitting in the entrance to the nest, and after the owlets fledged we watched them take their first flights, call back and forth to their parents in strange, screeching calls, and we had one reluctant flier sitting on our fence during for a couple of days. It made for some great photo ops (I'll see if I can't dig up those photos in the near future - that was back in my film days) and luckily it evaded any cats or other predators.

Off and on throughout the year we can hear the characteristic rapid, whistle-like hoots from inside our house at night. Tonight was one of those nights, and I stepped outside to get a better listen. Here is a little recording I made so you can hear them too. Sorry about the background noise - it was a bit windy/rainy out. I'm actually still hearing them now, about half an hour after I made the recording.

J-Pod and K-Pod Vocalizations from 12/10

Even though I'm down in Portland, I'm still getting "whale updates" and have had the chance a couple of times to listen to the whales on the Orca Sound hydrophone network. The evening of December 10th was especially cool, with J- and K-Pod vocalizing off and on for several hours in Haro Strait. (Note: the whales spend much less time in the inland waters during the winter months, compared to the summer but they've not-unexpectedly been in and out of Puget Sound all fall.) Thanks to Jeanne's recent posts I found a way to embed audio right into my blog post, so I hope you enjoy this 3:12 clip of the orcas vocalizing. Near the beginning you will hear the three-part descending calls that are characteristic of J-Pod. Closer to the end you will hear the high-pitched kitten-like calls of K-Pod.

Orca acoustics has been my area of research and right when I began studying the whales it intrigued me that you could identify which pod or pods are present simply the the vocalizations that they're making. In the case of the Southern Residents, the three pods (J, K, and L) share a set of +/- 25 different call types. Each call is named with an "S" for Southern Resident, then a number, so the calls are S1, S2, etc. Many calls are shared between all three pods but each pod has a certain sub-set of the shared repertoire that they use more often. For instance, S1 , one of the calls heard near the beginning, is almost exclusively a J-Pod call. Even among shared call types, such as S16, pods can have different "accents" to them, allowing you to tell them apart. S16 is one of the K-Pod calls heard towards the end of this recording, and I know it's K-Pod because it's so much higher pitched than when J- or L-Pod makes the same call.

K26 Lobo emerging from the dark depths of the ocean where he has been "talking" about....?

Even though we see the whales on an almost daily basis during the summer it's important to remember that they only spend 5% or less of their time at the surface. The vast majority of their life is spent in comparative underwater darkness, which is for them an acoustic realm rather than a visual one. While we rely primarily on visuals to identify individual whales, and study whales using the visual behaviors we see (breaches, tail slaps, etc.), I think their true secrets are locked up in their acoustic communication.

Orcas are one of the most heavily-studied marine mammal acoustic systems, and when people hear we've been studying orca acoustics for 40+ years, they often wonder if we have "cracked the code" and figured out what they're saying. In reality, we're nowhere close. It's not like in some animal communication systems where a single call can be paired with a single behavior. Instead, calls are used across all behavioral contexts. As I learned in my undergraduate thesis, there's a greater structure in how the calls are used, with certain call types often being linked together in their usage. The truth is we don't have a clue what they're talking about. I think that's pretty darn cool.

Raccoon Family

It's been nice and warm out the last few days, so we've had the windows open into the early evening. The other night, we started hearing these bizarre chittering noises - not the strange prehistoric sounds of a great blue heron, and not quite like the rambunctious mating noises of the river otters. We stepped outside, not really expecting to be able to see anything, but we soon spotted a raccoon straight over on the shoreline from our houseboat.

After watching for a few minutes, some little baby raccoons emerged from behind the mother - first one, then two, then three! It was dark out, so no real chance for photos, but I snapped a few flash shots just to capture proof:

There were some amazing interactions between mother and offspring. At one point the mom climbed up onto a high, flat rock and the little ones weren't able to follow. Two of them went around to meet up with her but the third was "stuck" and kept cooing for her. The mother came back, and reached down towards the young one, who was reaching up. They actually clasped "hands" for a moment, then the mom reached further down and grabbed the baby in her mouth by the scruff of its neck and hauled it up.

The family stayed in the area for about half an hour, vocalizing almost constantly. I decided to try and record the sounds over my laptop, with fairly decent results. You can hear a clip of them chittering here, and I was able to get it to work via my iWeb podcast this time so no downloading is required.

Orca Web Cams

Update October 2011: As this post remains popular for people looking for orca web cams, I've gone through the checked all the links. The only one that is now inactive is the Center for Whale Research webcam, which may be restored by next season. The best web cam for viewing Southern Residents is the controllable Race Rocks web cam - see below. You can also see lots of other wildlife like seals, sea lions, and sea birds from this cam.

Google Analytics is a great tool for monitoring traffic to your website. For instance, I've learned that a lot of people seem to find my blog while searching for orca web cams. While of course nothing even comes close to seeing the whales live, I know a lot of people like to monitor the whales from far away. I thought I would share some of the web cams I know about where it is possible to see whales, plus a way to listen for the whales.

First of all, the Center for Whale Research web cam (edit October 2011: this webcam is temporarily down, but video highlights can be seen from this link) is great because its located on the west side of San Juan Island overlooking Haro Strait, one of the Southern Residents' most common traveling routes in the summer months. You can also control the movements of the camera yourself.

Another great one is the Race Rocks Camera 5, which is another video remote-control camera. Race Rocks are located west of Victoria in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which is the main route the whales take when coming in and leaving to the Pacific Ocean.

These first two are the best, because they are controllable video web cams with a proven ability to see and follow the orcas. But, here are a few other still cameras (that update very minute or so) that overlook areas the orcas often travel, though they are untested as far as I know for actually seeing the orcas. You'd probably see the whale-watching boats first, then know to look for the orcas in many of these:

Island Cam has one that overlooks Rosario Strait from Anacortes. It may be possible to see orcas from this one in the summertime, because they frequently travel in Rosario Strait past Anacortes as they circumnavigate the San Juan Islands. Another good potential Island Cam is this one that looks west from Hannah Heights, which is a little south from Lime Kiln on San Juan Island.

Here's a webcam overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Gordon's Beach in Sooke, BC, another place the orcas travel past on their comings and goings from the San Juan Islands. The same network of BC web cams has another good one near Ogden Point, BC, further east in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

A lot of people ask about what happened to the web cams that used to be up at Lime Kiln Lighthouse, and if they're ever going to come back. Those cameras were bought and maintained under a grant The Whale Museum had for the Sea Sound project, and after that funding was used up there wasn't any way to maintain the cameras. So, for the foreseeable future, there won't be any web cams at Lime Kiln.

You don't necessarily have to be in Washington or BC to see the Southern Resident orcas, especially this time of year! On January 21st and January 24th, L-Pod was seen from the Whale Watching Center in Depoe Bay, Oregon. This whale watch center mostly focuses on following the gray whale migration, but they spotted L-Pod twice last month! As more people know what to look for to identify the Southern Residents, it's becoming more and more apparent that L-Pod and likely K-Pod spend at least part of their winters off the Oregon and California coasts. There have been California sightings of both K- and L-Pods as far south as Monterey, California on several occassions over the last few years.

Finally, you can also remotely follow the Southern Resident's movements acoustically, via orcasound.net. Here you can find a network of hydrophones (underwater microphones) streaming live on the internet. The best hydrophones to listen to are Lime Kiln, Orca Sound (a few miles north of Lime Kiln on the west side of San Juan Island), and Port Townsend for when the whales come and go through the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Not only will you have a chance to hear the orcas, but you can monitor their underwater environment and hear everything from the rushing tides to freighters to scuba divers.

I hope this helps you out in following the orcas from near or far. Definitely let me know if you have any success seeing or hearing them!

What is this middle-of-the-night mystery sound?

At about 1:30 this morning we started hearing a strange barking-like sound outside. It's coming from at least two individuals because at times it overlaps. Stepping outside, it *seemed* like the sound was coming from up above, so I thought a bird might be the source. That said, it sounds a lot like a sea lion barking, but I've never seen a sea lion anywhere near our marina. We do see harbor seals, but I've never heard one make an above-water noise, so I have no idea if that could be the source. It definitely does not sound like the most common nighttime noise we hear, the prehistoric crawking of great blue herons which we hear at any time of night.

I've spliced together a few samples I recorded onto my computer and you can hear the clip here. (There's some white noise and the occasional tinkling of our wind chime in the background.) So, who or what is making these sounds?! Please weigh in with your two cents, whether it be an answer, an educated guess, or wild speculation, because inquiring minds want to know!

"Mystery" solved!

Back in 2004, I witnessed an amazing thing as the L12 family group was traveling south towards Lime Kiln Lighthouse. One whale, either a female or a young male, came into view way ahead of the rest of the whales. It swam directly at the few of us sitting on the rocks, and stopped in the kelp bed just off of the lighthouse. Then, for the next few minutes, it stayed on the surface and continuously vocalized into the open air. It's one of the few times I've been able to identify a call type when a whale vocalizes on the surface (it was S2iii), and the only time I have ever heard a whale vocalize on the surface in succession again and again and again. Whenever the whale submerged, it continued vocalizing (as we heard over the hydrophones), and whenever it surfaced it was completely draped in kelp. It's one of the most bizarre encounters I've ever had with the whales, as it left all of us on shore asking helplessly "What are you trying to tell us?!" As the rest of the L12s came into view much farther offshore a few minutes later, the whale turned and head out, joining up with them and continuing on their way.

My friend Jeanne was there to witness it with me, and between the video she took and the photos I took we tried in vain to identify the whale. It was no use - the whale was backlit, and every time it surfaced it was so covered in kelp it was impossible to discern anything about the saddle patch. We finally let it rest and settled for the fact that we would never know who the mystery whale was.

Well, a recent project of ours has been to start developing an eyepatch guide for the whales. In addition to the saddle patch that sits just behind the dorsal fin, each whale also has a unique eyepatch. We humans don't use eyepatches all that often to ID the whales since the differences can be subtle and we don't always get a good look at their eyepatch when they surface - in the past eyepatches have pretty much just used to confirm a saddle patch ID and that's about it. The whales, on the other hand, may very whale use eyepatch shape to tell one another apart. Anyway, Jeanne and I are slowly building our eyepatch database with hope that we can ID whales who spyhop, and other instances where you just don't get a good look at the saddle. Well, today we had our first ever "eyepatch breakthrough", as Jeanne went back and looked at her video of what we've come to call the "above water vocalization incident" - it turns out the mystery whale is (how appropriate): Mystery L85!! You can watch a short video clip from this incident on Jeanne's blog here.

The above image illustrates how eyepatches can be different. The one on the left is an unusual shape. The one in the middle has some black "beauty mark" spots in the middle of it. The one on the right has indistinct edges - notice especially how along the right side it looks "smudged".

Race Rocks Sunset and Cacophony

A few weeks ago I was visiting the Race Rocks webcam, and I realized for the first time that sound actually comes through the webcam as well! That's what I get for always having my volume turned down....

From the webcam I was watching a beautiful autumn sunset and hearing a cacophony of gulls with some sea lions growling and barking in the background. I had to capture the moment to share, and I did so by taking a still image from the web cam and making a recording of the vocalizations through the built-in microphone on my computer (which picked up the sounds off my speakers).

I'm trying something new here, using iWeb's podcast feature to try and host my own audio files on a page called "Orca Watcher Sounds". This way, you should be able to go click the above link and listen to the audio clip without having to download a file and open an external application. Hopefully I can upload all my audio files there, and you can listen to any of my posted vocalizations from that one site. Let me know how this works for you!

K-Pod Calls from Yesterday

While listening live as I recorded yesterday, I thought the whales were pretty vocal, but it turns out it was pretty hard to find a nice, short sample that has a lot of vocalizations! I found a decent one though: here's a clip from yesterday when J and K Pods went north past the lighthouse. This seems to be all K-Pod vocals; while both Js and Ks make these calls, K-Pod has a distinct high-pitched version that sounds like kittens mewing.

Superpod Recording Clip

Okay, I think this should work. It's not quite as beautiful as on some other blogs I've seen, but here is a clip (about 45 seconds long) of the superpod I recorded last Saturday, the 23rd. I was at Lime Kiln Lighthouse, where they broadcast the hydrophones on 88.1 FM. I used my iAudio Mp3 player (which also has a built-in FM recorder) to record the passby, and this is a clip full of lots of vocalizations. How cool that I've figured out how to share this!

Also, as a side note, I'll be out of town over the weekend at the Bumbershoot music festival in Seattle. So there won't be posts for a few days, but I'll be back on Monday!