Foggy Morning, Sunny Afternoon, Superpod Whales on the Prince

We had two amazing trips today aboard the Western Prince as the superpod whales continued, and there were tons of great photo ops. As always, click on the photos to get a larger view - these pics definitely look great bigger.

This morning in the fog we found K and L Pod whales off of False Bay. It's always cool to watch whales in the fog as they can appear and disappear out of nowhere, and that's definitely how it happened today.

L74 Saanich, passing off the stern in the fog

K34 Cali and K13 Skagit pass off the bow

Cool full frame shot into the light, also off the bow

By the afternoon the fog had burned off and we saw members of all three pods offshore between Hein Bank and False Bay. Whenever all three pods are together they can mix up and you may see uncharacteristic combinations of whales, like today we saw J34 Doublestuf (11 year-old male) and L2 Grace (49 year-old female) traveling together.

J34

L2, who was right in front of J34

We got to check out many different groups of whales, and saw some tail slaps, pec slaps, and even a bit of sexual activity. I've seen a lot of K21 Cappucino lately, and today was no exception. He and three other whales gave us a nice look:

K21 Cappucino, after passing off the stern

K21 Cappucino diving on the right, with his sister K40 Raggedy in the middle, and another K-Pod female on the left

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Bizarre Orange Algae(?) and Spread Out Ks and Ls

Today was the second day I observed a strange orange patch on the surface of the water. I'm assuming its some sort of algal bloom? Its very diffuse and cloudy looking, as you can see at the bottom of the photo. Both times I've seen this the patches have been in zig-zaggy lines maybe 10-15 yards long, and don't seem to penetrate more than a foot or two deep. Any ideas what this might be, anyone?

This afternoon on the Western Explorer we headed out toward Hein Bank where K-Pod, L-Pod, and perhaps a portion of J-Pod were spread out over several foraging. On the way out we stopped to check out a good sized bait ball of feeding birds, and one of our passengers spotted a separate little flock of birds that turned out to be my first red-necked phalaropes of the season. I was expecting them any day now....cool!

The whales were going on uncharacteristically long dives of up to 7 minutes, but we had the chance to check out several different small groups of 1-4 animals. At first we followed who I believe might have been K12 Sequim and K37 Rainshadow. There was a minke whale in the area with them, and at one point the minke surfaced within 100 yards of the orcas and just a second or two after they dove. You have to wonder what the two different cetacean species make of each other!

After watching K21 Cappucino and his sister K40 Raggedy swim by, we followed along big male L74 Saanich for a little while. He has such a broad dorsal fin:

It was a calm Pacific Northwest afternoon, with gray skies and flat calm waters, to the point where it was hard to differentiate the sky from the water. Do you see the horizon in the photo below? This is L100 Indigo, an eight year-old male who was travleing with his mom and younger brother:

It was beautiful lighting for watching the whales, but a bit hard for making out saddle patches to get IDs. We saw several little family groups like this one traveling together:

It was hard to leave as even when we started to make our way back towards Friday Harbor we would run into spread out groups of whales. The last ones we watched were the K14 family group (K14 Lea and her three offspring), including big male K26 Lobo, pictured below:

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Superpod in Georgia Strait

This afternoon on the Western Explorer we headed through the beautiful Canadian Gulf Islands up to the north side of Active Pass in the southern Strait of Georgia where we met up with a superpod (members of all three pods) that had made amazing time booking it north all morning. All the whales except the L5 and L54 matrilines (7 whales) were there, but they were spread out over 5+ miles. Still, we did see whales from J-Pod, K-Pod, and L-Pod.

We got a nice look at the L2 matriline, made up of mom L2 Grace and her two boys L78 Gaia and L88 Wavewalker. From left to right in the photo below is L88, L2, and L78:

About a month ago L78 showed up with some pretty serious rake marks along the front edge of his dorsal fin. They appear to be from another orca. We see rake marks on whales pretty often - probably a result of rough-housing and or disciplining - but I have never seen rake marks as deep or extensive as those Gaia returned with. There has been a lot of speculation as to what he might have done to "deserve" this from another whale....the most interesting theory I've heard is that just before he returned with the rake marks, he and the rest of L-Pod were in an area where some offshore orcas (a completely separate population) were seen. Maybe there was a rough encounter between the two different cultures of orcas that, as far as we know, rarely interact with each other?

The good news is today I was able to tell that Gaia's rake marks are healing nicely. On the left side is a photo of the rake marks on his left side back on July 12th. The rake marks looked similarly severe on both sides, so you can see on the photo on the right how much they have healed based on a photo from today, where the marks are fading. As always, click on a photo to get a larger view:

There was another family group of whales traveling with the L2 matriline, and while I wasn't able to determine who they were in person, from my photos I was able to see it was J27 Blackberry and his two younger siblings J31 Tsuchi and J39 Mako. This is interesting because at the time we were under the impression all of J-Pod was up ahead about five miles, so I guess in reality the whales were "all mixed up"! Here is male J27 on the left and male L78 Gaia on the right:

The last group coming out of Active Pass was K-Pod, and our last look of the day was of a group of four K-Pod whales traveling off separate from the rest of the pod. The left two whales are 46 year-old female K40 Raggedy and her 23 year-old brother K21 Cappuccino. The right two whales are 24 year-old female K16 Opus and her 7 year-old son K35 Sonata:

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A Transient Day on the Explorer

On this foggy day reports were that all the Southern Residents were out west well out of our range, but late morning a boat picked up a group of transient (marine mammal feeding) orcas on the Canadian side of Haro Strait. Our Western Explorer trip was delayed a bit due to the fog, but once we got out there we met up with the group of about 10 transients a little ways south of D'Arcy Island in Canada.

I don't know what it has been this year, but I have had several encounters where a tight group of whales surfaces all together. I feel like that's something I didn't see much of last year, but it is so cool to see so many fins at the surface at the same time. These transients were relatively easy to track, since they were traveling in a straight line. They would all surface together several times, then dive for about seven minutes. Here's what it looked like when they were up:

The big male in the photo above is T102. He was there with his mother, T101, and her other offspring T101A and T101B. Also present were T90 and T90B, and part of the T124 family group.

Transients don't ever have what we call "open" saddle patches like some of the residents due, where there is black inside the saddle patch making it look like a check mark. Ts, as we call them, pretty much always have solid saddle patches, but what I noticed today is that a lot of them have black lines through the saddle. See the black line through the gray saddle patch on the whale below? I thought this would make it easy to identify, but I'm not sure which whale this is. Since we don't see transients all that often, my ability to ID them is not up to snuff.

Another difference between residents and transients is that transients tend to have much pointier dorsal fins. Look at how pointy the fin is on that female in the middle!

On the way back to Friday Harbor we swung past Spieden Island where we saw some harbor seals, Mouflon sheep, and this striking adult bald eagle. I love the composition with all those gray branches against the yellow hillside!

Finally - A Butterfly!

I know some of my fellow bloggers have been interested in some San Juan Island butterflies. It's been a few weeks coming, but believe me, I've been trying! It seems whenever I go out specifically looking for butterflies I can't find them, or when I do they're flying high overhead and never set down. Today, while I was enjoying a sunny afternoon reading on the rocks out at Lime Kiln, I had an unexpected visitor who stayed put long enough for me to snap a few photos. My best guess is it's a Western White (Pontia occidentalis):

Js and Ks Resting in the Morning, Ls Playing in the Afternoon

Today was another one of those fabulous days aboard the Western Prince. On both the morning and the afternoon trips we left the dock unsure if we were going to see killer whales, and we ended up having two fantastic encounters.

On the morning trip we headed up Swanson Channel in the Canadian Gulf Islands to the north, where we met up with both J and K Pods. Both pods were in resting formation, which means when you see one dorsal fin, you see them all! Js were a little further offshore than Ks, so we would see one group surface close to shore, and then another closer to us. I have never seen two pods resting like that at the same time....SO MANY fins! How cool. Check out some shots of the J-Pod resting line:

After heading through Active Pass, J and K Pods shot to the northeast and out of our range. We decided to head south for our afternoon trip to look for what have been very reliable minke whales out near Salmon Bank. Indeed, in what has become the usual spot, Captain Hobbes spotted a minke. Minkes can be a little slinky, but today this little whale was definitely interested in checking us out, and surfaced near the boat on three separate occassions. It caught me totally off guard and I didn't have my camera in hand, but you could see the whole body of the whale - from its eye on the side of its head right down to the tip of its flukes. It was a pretty small animal again, so I'm wondering if its not the same whale that checked out the Western Explorer the other day. I did grab my camera in time to get this shot:

Then came the word that everyone was hoping for: L-Pod was inbound from Victoria. Thankfully we had gone south, because it put us in perfect position to catch up with them. When we got on scene they were spread out into two or three different groups, and the group we saw was made up of a bunch of playful mothers, calves, and juveniles.

It was my first good look at calf L112, who was born earlier this year to L86 Surprise:

There was a lot of rolling at the surface, so you would see different parts of the whales' bodies. as they swam by. Here's a pec slap an inverted tail slap:

Here are three whales surfacing together as we got our last look of the day. I didn't notice it at the time, but a lot of my photos show the blows as having a slight rainbow tint to them....I like to call these "rainblows":

This shot of L95 Nigel shows it a little better:

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Superpod Split - L-Pod in San Juan Channel!

What an interesting day! Last night a superpod (all members of all three pods) headed north towards the Fraser River, and this morning they were found coming back south down Boundary Pass, a pretty typical route for them. But then a very strange thing happened - most of L-Pod broke off from everybody else and came down some of the inland channels, first through President's Channel and then south through San Juan Channel. It is only about once or twice a season we get resident whales traveling through San Juan Channel, and today was one of those days!

Here's a map to show you what the whales did today. J-Pod, K-Pod, and two small L-Pod family groups took the "normal" route south to the west side of San Juan Island. The rest of L-Pod took the bizarre route:

I was out on the Western Explorer this afternoon and literally all we had to do was pull out of the marina and we could see whales in front of us. The whales were in two groups, and we met up with the lead group, which seemed to be all of the L12 subpod, a group of ten whales, including L12 Alexis and male L85 Mystery:

While it was sunny and clear in Friday Harbor, as we headed south through San Juan Channel we encountered first low-lying clouds and then fog. Check out this Washington State Ferry emerging of the mist with a hazy Mt. Baker in the background:

We continued following the L12s into the fog, and L41 Mega was, as expected, with his sisters and older female L25 Ocean Sun. Here is Mega and one of his sisters, L77 Matia:

After a time we broke off to check out some other wildlife, including harbor seals, a couple of sea bird nesting colonies, a bald eagle nest, and three bald eagles. Then on our way back to Friday Harbor we encountered L-Pod again down at Griffin Bay, and by this time the fog had mostly burned off. After the L12s went by we were able to confirm that most of the rest of L-Pod was present. "The big part of L-Pod", as I call them, spends a lot of time out in the open ocean so we don't see them as much as the other Southern Residents. For this reason, it's always fun to see them.

The L5 and L54 matrilines were there, and several of their members are pictured in the photo below. From left to right we have L100 Indigo (an 8 year-old male), L5 Tanya (a 45 year-old female), an unidentified whale, and L73 Flash (a 23 year-old male). Flash has a wavy dorsal fin and is often confused for J1 Ruffles, but if you look closely he has a notch near the base of his fin that is the sure-fire way to tell them apart:

There are so many big male dorsal fins in L-Pod, which is great to see! I remember not too long ago when we had only 3 breeding age males in the entire population, and its neat to have watched so many young males grow up. Here is L92 Crewser (15 year-old male) surfacing with L84 Nyssa (19 year-old male). You can see that males' dorsal fins don't grow at the same rate, as Crewser is younger but seems to have a taller fin. It's not often you get to make a direct comparison like this!

It wasn't all males, though. We had a small group fo whales come porposing by, including youngster L105 Fluke. It seems like every time I see Fluke he's flying out of the water in some fashion or another. Check out this sequence of him surfacing:

After getting back to port I headed out to the west side of San Juan Island to check on the progress of the southbound J and K Pods. Off Land Bank I got a nice pass by the "real" J1 Ruffles - no notch on this one! He was the closest whale there was to shore - the others were spread out up to several miles offshore.

I heard that L-Pod came out of Cattle Pass and porpoised north to meet up with Js, Ks, and the rest of Ls. The three pods were only separated for a couple of hours but I guess they couldn't wait to meet up again! We've had a superpod going on for days now, and it seems like there are whales everywhere. I know, I know....it's a rough life.

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