Stellar Stellers and a Juvie Bald Eagle

After our amazing transient encounter the other day, we headed up to Kelp Reef in northern Haro Strait to check out some Steller sea lions. When we first got there I didn't see any Stellers....but wait....is that kelp? No, it's a sea lion lump! These guys were just hanging there at the surface with only part of their backs exposed, and they looked just like a piece of kelp floating on the surface:

Once they lifted their heads it was much easier to identify them as Steller sea lions:

There were three big males in total. I found this picture of the three of them pretty comical as they came over to check us out:

But I reminded myself these guys can weight 1500 pounds MORE than an adult male grizzly bear! So my respsect for them was duly restored.

The water was so calm and clear that my eye was then attracted to the bull kelp bed we were floating over. The fronds were trailing at the surface and you could look straight down at the stipes as they disappeared into the depths below:

When I got back to shore I thought my wildlife viewing for the day might be over, but not so! After dinner we decided to go for a walk (I love this staying light until 8 o'clock again!), and on our way to the park we slowed down for a turkey vulture in the road. While we waited for the turkey vulture to move on, Keith spotted a juvenile bald eagle sitting in the tree right next to the road! It certainly didn't seem to mind our presence as I leaned out the window and took a few pictures. It's probably the closest I've ever been to a bald eagle, especially a perched one! The next day when I biked by this road I saw the remnants of a fox carcass on the street right where the eagle and vulture had been, so this must be what was attracting their attention that evening.

The eagle looks so fierce in the photo above, but look at this head-on photo of him/her looking right at the camera! I won't call it a comical shot (I don't want to belittle this top predator either), but it certainly is a cuter look than you usually get from an eagle:

Transient IDs and Navy Sonar Incident and Comment Period

After comparing notes with other whale reports I've been able to figure out the identity of all the transients ("Ts") I saw on Monday. The two females and calf were the T123s. T123 is the mother and the calf is T123B, a newly documented whale probably just a few months old. While both mom and youngster were around in the porpoise hunt, my photos revealed that it was T123's older daugther, nine year old T123A, that was the primary participant and the whale that launched the porpoise out of the water. It's amazing to me that we know enough about these whales - even the relatively mysterious transients - for me to be able to figure out the exact whale it was in that photo. Thanks, of course, to others who were there being able to ID the group of three as the T123s, and to T123A having a distinct notch on her fin I can just make out in that photo. Here's another photo showing her and her notch:

T123A

The other group of Ts was indeed male T14 with four of the T49s - specifically, T49A, T49A1, T49B, and T49B1. The complicated transient whale nomenclature actually encodes the whales genealogy in their names, since their pods are more fluid than those of the resident whales. So T49B was the second offspring of T49, and T49B1 is the first offspring of T49B.

Finally, I must say a word about a bizarre incident that occurred the night of the 7th-8th. Starting at about 7 PM and continuing until after 4 AM, a strange human voice and sonar pings were audible on the Lime Kiln and Orcasound hydrophones. It turns out the sonar pings were coming from the US Navy submarine the USS San Francisco, and the strange voices were underwater communication occurring between the submarine and an accompanying surface vessel. You can hear a sample of the sounds that occurred here.

Navy sonar is a great concern when it comes to marine mammals, because animals in the presence of sonar have demonstrated physiological and behavioral responses the intense sounds including disorientation, panic, hearing loss, tears in the ear, brain hemorrhaging, and stranding, in some cases resulting in the death of the animal. The last major incident in the area involving Navy sonar occurred in May 2003 when J-Pod was in the area - a scary situation in which these endangered whales showed unusual behavior where they came close to shore (where the acoustic impacts of the sonar were lessened) and repeatedly spyhopped, apparently to get their ears clear of the water. That incident resulted in the deaths and stranding of at least several harbor porpoises, and you can read about it and see evidence of porpoise brain hemorrhaging at the Center for Whale Research's report on the Shoup.

Luckily there have been no reported strandings in response to this most recent incident and no orcas were believed to be in the immediate area at the time, although several transient groups were reported in the region in the days preceding and following the incident. Still, it is a grim, timely reminder that the US Navy is exempt from the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and is currently seeking to expand its local training range to include a huge portion of vital killer whale and marine mammal habitat. They are currently seeking public comment on their Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), and their proposal in includes minimal mitigation measures to prevent harm to marine mammals.

Obviously, this is an issue close to my home and my heart. I strongly encourage you to submit public comments supporting the "No Action Alternative", which keeps the current training area in place. They simply have not invested the resources in studying the impacts to marine mammals and do not have the measures in place to ensure marine mammals are not within lethal range of their sonar and explosive detonations during training activities. The EIS document itself is imposing, but you can read up on this issue and learn everything you need to know to comment via Orca Network's informational page about this public comment period. Comments are due April 13th!

We need to take into consideration our nation's security and I understand the need for the Navy to undergo training exercises. Still, this is such a vital yet fragile marine ecosystem, and one serious incident involving sonar and the Southern Resident whales could easily spell their extinction. Hopefully under President Obama, we can begin to improve international communication so that disagreements are resolved at the bargaining table and not at war, and these sorts of training exercises will be less necessary and perceived as less vital for maintaining our country's safety. Obama appointed Jane Lubchenco to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and she is a respected marine biologist who has critiqued the government's dealings with oceanic issues in the past. She recognizes that we, as a people, along with all life on earth, depend on healthy oceans to survive on this planet. Hopefully we, as a nation, will move towards an attitude that preserves our marine resources and helps them to thrive, from orcas and harbor porpoises to krill and plankton. I understand the need for military operations, but it's hard for me to justify some of their short-term goals when looking at the long-term impacts it could have on ocean life.

My First Orcas of 2009: Transients in Haro Strait!

Yesterday was a beautiful spring day - sunny, flat calm waters, 60 degrees. What could make it even better? A whale report of course! I heard from Jim Maya in the morning that there was a report of transients heading east from Victoria, right into our neighborhood. Luckily he was heading out in the afternoon and had space on board, so I was excited to have the chance to go out with him, thinking I might see my first orcas of 2009. Little did I know what an amazing transient orca encounter lay ahead of us!!

There were three different groups of transients in the area totaling about 14 animals. Transients are the marine mammal feeding orcas that are in smaller groups, roam less predictably, and have been seen more and more in the area in recent years due to the booming pinniped (seal and sea lion) population. They don't interact or interbreed at all with J-, K-, and L-Pods, the fish-eating residents we see most often in the summer.

The first group of transients we got a good look at was a group of three whales including two females and a very young calf:

Soon after we arrived on scene they started circling, which is typical hunting behavior. Jim had seen some porpoises in the vicinity, and sure enough I soon spotted a little harbor porpoise surfacing in front of the whales, being chased around in circles. Both the females and the calf were involved in the chase. The calf was so small that at times it was hard to tell the calf from the porpoise they were chasing! On the left is the calf (maybe 6-7 feet long) surfacing in front of its mother. On the right is the porpoise (maybe 4-5 feet long) surfacing in front of one of the female Ts:

Were we perhaps seeing this little calf being trained in the hunt? It sure looked like at as they "toyed" with the porpoise for about 20 minutes before the hunt really got serious. And did it ever get serious in a hurry! Suddenly one of the adult orcas lunged completely out of the water, launching the harbor porpoise high into the air! I can't believe I had my camera in the right spot at the right time and even remembered to click to take the photos....I'll be honest I didn't even see the porpoise when the event happened live at real time but the photos revealed what happened:

That was the last we saw of the porpoise - alive anyway. Next the feeding occurred, and here is one of the adults circling a piece of red meat that was floating on the surface. The meat disappeared just after this pass by the orca:

Right after the kill finished we were surprised by the appearance of another group of 5 transients right in our vicinity. We had seen them in the distance earlier but thought they had headed in the opposite direction. It just goes to show how easily these whales can appear and disappear, especially if they're in "stealth mode". This photo shows male T14, also known as Pender, on the left. The first time I saw Pender was back in September; he's a well-known transient locally because of the scars on the front edge of his dorsal fin from a tagging device that was attached to him in the 1970s.

T14 often travels alone, but here he is pictured with the T49s. My best guess from left to right is: T14, T49A1, T49B1, T49B, and T49A. Click on the photo for a better look at it.

Before we headed back to the harbor we had a good look at the 3 stellar sea lions, and then later in the day back at home I had an amazing look at a juvenile bald eagle - so those will be featured in the next post!

Renewal: Osprey Nest

Back in January, you may remember when I noted that the osprey nest at British Camp had been blown down. I was down at British Camp birding this afternoon (in the warm 60 degree sunshine!) when I heard what sounded like an animal trying to pull bark off a tree. I scanned up and down several trees without being able to locate what I thought would most likely be a woodpecker. Suddenly I heard a whoosh as a large bird took flight above me - it was an osprey!

Clutched in its talons was a mid-sized branch that it had presumably just pulled off the tree. I followed it to see where it would end up, perhaps giving me a clue as to a new nest site. Old habits die hard, though, and the bird flew straight up to the perch where the old nest was located. Through binoculars I could see that the construction of a new nest was underway, and one of the ospreys was still perched up there when I left more than an hour later. Hopefully they'll have good luck building this nest and raising some chicks this year!

Spring Has Sprung

Yesterday I was on the mainland for the day. I've got to stop leaving the island so much...usually I'm able to stay for several months at a time but an odd set of circumstances has had me leave four times in the last few weeks, twice on the 6 AM ferry this week! Anyway, I just had to pull over to take a closer look at these baby goats.

The very friendly farmer picked one up and handed it to me over the fence. The little guy let out an irresistible bleat and kicked me in the middle of the chest, not hard enough to hurt. The man explained these were Angora goats, and they had several dozen of them roaming around their barnyard along with sheep and chickens. Like sheep, they get shorn for their fleece, which is called mohair. I had only heard of Angora rabbits, another species bred for its soft hair, and it turns out they both get their name from Angora region where they originated near Ankara, Turkey. The top photo is definitely a purebred Angora, but the one below might be one of the mixes he said they had, because it doesn't have that curl to its hair.

I know, not wildlife, but these goats finally convinced me of the fact many people around here have been claiming for weeks: spring has sprung!

Orca Prey Sharing and Aerial Photogrammetry

There were two talks at the Transboundary Workshop that really stood out to me. The first was a talk by John Ford, someone I was especially excited to see because he really pioneered killer whale acoustics, the field where I've done my research. This DFO scientist didn't talk about acoustics this time, though, but rather resident killer whale prey specialization on Chinook salmon.

We all know the whales prefer Chinook, but the extent to which they do is really phenomenal. At times, sockeye salmon will outnumber Chinook salmon 1000:1 in areas where the whales are foraging, yet there is virtually no evidence that the whales ever feed on sockeye. Chinook are probably preferred not only for their superior lipid content, but because they are abundant in nearshore waters year-round, whereas many other species are only abundant during brief seasonal migrations. (Young adult Chinook stay in nearshore waters while they grow, whereas other salmonid species go far offshore, outside of the resident orca's normal range.)

Whatever the reason, their preference for Chinook has really become a cultural one. Another cultural behavior the whales engage in is prey sharing, where one fish will be divided up among two or more whales. I knew this occurred, but Ford suggested in his talk that it may be occurring more often than we realized. He also had some absolutely stunning still images taken from underwater video footage they've recorded of the whales engaging in prey sharing. Imagine three whales all facing each other underwater, pulling apart a large silver fish and dividing it up among their family members. Moms will share fish they catch with their offspring, Ford explained, but juveniles will share fish with their mothers and other siblings, too.

Realizing that prey sharing may in fact occur on a regular basis, I figure that some of the circling behavior I see from the whales sometimes may actually be prey sharing in action. The whales are sometimes spread out in what looks like foraging when suddenly you'll see a momentary aggregation like this one - now I know what's probably going on:

Prey sharing in action?

The other talk I was really impressed by was John Durban from the Center for Whale Research, who talked about new research started last summer with the goal of assessing killer whale size and body condition. Basically, they photograph the whales from a helicopter, and knowing their altitude and the focal length of their lens allows them to scale their photographs and measure the size of the whales in the photo. This simple but elegant concept is known as aerial photogrammetry.

Okay, the above photo wasn't taken from a helicopter, but from the top of Lime Kiln Lighthouse, which is the closest to an aerial view I've had of the whales. But I would love to see them from the air!

In September of last year they ran 10 flights and were able to photograph 69 of the Southern Residents. From their photographs, they made three measurements of each individual - length, breadth (width just behind the dorsal fin), and head width (width near the blowhole - important because a malnourished whale often appears thin in this area, and it is believed that some of the 7 whales lost last year were malnourished).

The longest whale was not in fact J1 Ruffles, as many people believe. It was another adult male, L41 Mega, who measured in at just under 24 feet. The range for male whales was 21-24 feet, while the range for females was 18-21 feet. This puts our local killer whales in the mid-size range for killer whales worldwide. For instance, Antarctic orcas are smaller, whereas local transient orcas are larger. The largest killer whale every documented was 32-foot male of the coast of Japan.

The largest of the Southern Resident Killer Whales: L41 Mega.

The largest head width in proportion to body size came in the calves, specifically K42, which is a good sign that we have some robust youngsters out there! On the other hand, the smallest head width belonged to K14 Lea, the mother of K42, likely because she has a decreased body condition due to the energetic costs of keeping her calf well-nourished. The female with the next smallest head was L67 Splash, a female who was lost last year, supporting the theory that she was malnourished before she died.

This research technique has been used on cetaceans in other places, but there is really a unique opportunity here because it's the only place where you can do this on whales of known age and gender. Of course there is variation in measurements between different whales (ie, not all the females are the same size), so it would be difficult to say "a whale with head width less than X is malnourished". However, there is potential to gather longitudinal information on individual whales in this population. This means that over time, they may be able to assess the body conditions of each specific whale compared to data from that whale gathered in previous years. Cool stuff!

Southern Resident Killer Whale Transboundary Naturalist Workshop

I spent Monday and Tuesday of this week in Port Townsend, WA at the Transboundary Naturalist Workshop that focused on the Southern Resident killer whales. The most amazing part to me was having so many of the local whale folks all in the same room - something that hasn't happened before, in part because of the difficulty of coordinating people in what really is a transboundary ecosystem covering islands and mainland, US and Canada.

It was an honor to have many of the true "whale gurus" all there at once, like Ken Balcomb, Rich Osborne, and John Ford. In addition to these true pioneers in the field, there were representatives from all the major regional whale watching companies, including owners/operators/drivers as well as naturalists from places like Anacortes, the San Juan Islands, Victoria, Sooke, and Vancouver, BC. Many current researchers in the field were present, from organizations such the Northwest Fisheries Science Center and the University of Washington. Finally, many enforcement officials were present as well, from Soundwatch and Straitwatch to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. It was truly a great opportunity to network, put faces with names and voices we usually hear only over marine radio, and engage in some great discussions.

The conference was held at Fort Worden State Park, and we stayed the night dormortories built in 1904 for soldiers stationed at the fort. While it proved difficult for everyone to find their rooms since doors between every floor and wing were locked (you had to find the proper outside entrance to your wing, without a map of room numbers), once I found my room it had a great water view looking over Admiralty Inlet:

It will take a bit to process all of the information and connections that were made at the conference. In reality, I didn't learn that much new about the whales, but that's since I have been fortunate enough to hear many of these speakers present their work before, and new things I did learn were really cool. Regardless, it all really gets you thinking, and I'll definitely share some of the cool things that were talked about over the next couple days. I also had a chance in the evening to present to an interested audience about the Salish Sea Association of Marine Naturalists, and bring in more members to get involved in our projects as we move forward over the next year.

Getting back to San Juan Island proved difficult on Tuesday. High winds closed down the Port Townsend-Keystone ferry route for much of the day, which was my connection to get back to the Anacortes-Friday Harbor ferry. I was originally planning to leave a bit early and get back in time to play hockey last night, but when that wasn't going to happen I started thinking about alternative routes driving further south on the Olympic Peninsula to cross over to the mainland - a longer drive, but something that would get me home. Luckily the ferry route opened up again and I was able to take the ferry to Keystone after the conference was over, although it was a very rocky, wavy ride.

I was concerned for those who had shuttled over on whale watch boats from places like Victoria and Friday Harbor. While it was certainly safe for them to go, I had their comfort in mind when after the conference I looked out over the Strait of Juan de Fuca and saw all the white caps in the photo below. I offered people rides which they declined, and I guess they regretted it as they had to put with 12 foot seas, sea sickness, and some of the worst conditions most of them have boated in. I'm so glad I wasn't on those boats!!

While I was concerned about being able to make it home, all the travel ended up going smoothly. I had time to check out the Point Wilson Lighthouse at the State Park before heading over to catch my first ferry:

Like I said, after two days of lectures I know I felt a little spacey afterwards as my brain tried to catch up and process all the great information. I will definitely be sharing some great info in the next couple of days, so check back for that!