August 11th: Half a Superpod

For a little over a week I only saw the whales very far (more than a mile) away, but the stars aligned for me again during my lunch break on August 11th. It started out with three humpback whales off the west side! They were also pretty far away, but always a treat to see from shore.

Then I saw some groups of orcas slowly, slowly heading north. At first I thought it was all of them, as everyone but the L54 sub-group of L-Pod had been around. I soon realized while there was a lot of whales (about 30), it wasn't enough to be everyone, though members of all three pods were present! They all split up into yet another new grouping, with about half of them in Haro Strait. I later heard the other half were partying up in Rosario on the other side of the San Juan Islands!

Adult male approaching!

The first group to approach was a large one, and they weren't in any hurry to go anywhere!

I was thrilled to pick L41 Mega out of the crowd. He's a member of the L12 sub-group of L-Pod, whales I used to see more than any others during the summer. Not so this year! The L12s have been scarce in inland waters - this was only the second time I've seen Mega this year!

L41 Mega and Soundwatch

Lots of dorsals!!

I thought it was really funny that while this big group was meandering along the shoreline, J2 Granny and L87 Onyx came rocketing up from the south and into the lead. She often leads the way north, and she had clearly decided it was time to go!

J2 Granny and L87 Onyx cruising up the west side

Luckily the whales were heading slow enough that I could beat them a little further north and see them again - this time even closer to shore! I actually had to wait a bit, because they were going so slowly - here's who kept me company in the meantime:

Black oystercatcher

But before too long - whales approaching! Simply the best feeling.

A huge cartwheel by L94 Calypso:

L94 Calypso

I got a better look at the whales this time, and realized Mega's family group was hanging tight with the J22s, also known as "The Cookies". J22 Oreo has one of the most unique eyepatches, with black "beauty marks" in it (click to see a larger view):

J22 Oreo

More dorsal! I think this is Mega.

Underwater whales! I love it when you can see the whales underwater, even if it's just an abstract patch of white. I believe this was J34 Doublestuf swimming upside down:

These moments always pass so fast! These are all uncropped photos now...

J32 Rhapsody

I almost got a fantastic shot of L119 Joy! I like it anyway, even if her nose is out of the frame. She was cruisin'!

L119 Joy

Not far from Joy, the youngest whale in L-Pod at two years-old, was the oldest whale in L-Pod: L25 Ocean Sun, estimated to be about 86 years old.

L25 Ocean Sun

L25 Ocean Sun

 It was cool to see the two males hanging out together. They both surfaced right in front of me!

J34 Doublestuf

L41 Mega

L41 Mega

J34 Doublestuf

This would prove to be the last party day - for now - as most of the whales would leave the next morning. Not all of them, however! I'd be in store for another magical encounter just a few days later....stay tuned!

August 1: Sea otter!!!! ....and whales :)

The most exciting sighting at Lime Kiln yesterday wasn't a cetacean but a mustelid! There have been a few sightings of sea otters around the San Juan Islands in recent weeks and I was ecstatic to be able to see one myself. I've only seen a sea otter off Lime Kiln once before, in 2005.

Sea otter holding a huge sea urchin

Sea otters used to inhabit the Salish Sea, but were locally exterminated during the fur trade. A population has been re-established on the outer coast of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, and is doing well, so it's reasonable to hope that one day they will re-expand back into inland waters. 

This otter was not afraid of people at all! Lots of folks were climbing down on the rocks quite close to it, and it didn't seem to mind one bit. In fact, I'm pretty sure it bothered me more than it bothered him/her. See it napping in the kelp in the photo below?

Close up of just the otter, in its Zen pose:

 

 It was hanging out all day, and over the course of the afternoon it did all the various (cute) otter behaviors: slept in the kelp, swam on its back, did some barrel rolls, caught and ate a few sea urchins, and banged a shell open with a rock.

Late afternoon I was just about to leave when I decided to walk down to the shoreline one last time to see the otter. I'm glad I did, because that's when I got my best shot of the day!

Prints available here

As fantastic as the otter was, the whales did come by too! After spending the last couple days up north, J2 Granny's group (J2, J14s, J16s, J19s, and L87) came south down Haro Strait along with the K14s. Interestingly, it wasn't Granny who was out in the lead, but K14 Lea.

K14 Lea

Most of the whales were about as far out as K14, or further. J37 Hy'Shqa and J49 T'ilem I'nges stopped to do what I'm assuming was pursue a fish, and then went down for a longer dive. When they popped up, they were surprisingly right off the kelp just to the right of us!!

These two have been my most photographed whales this season, I think.

July 29 and 30 Js and Ks, More Data

On Tuesday the 29th the whales happened to cooperate almost perfectly with my half-day work schedule. I got out to Lime Kiln early afternoon in the middle of a passby as parts of all three pods headed north. While I did miss J2 Granny, I was there for what ended up being the closest groups - again there were whales right off the rocks!

Another perspective of shore-based whale watchers at Lime Kiln

It was still early enough that the lighting was nice to see those saddle patches that each whale can be identified by. If I were putting together an ID guide, these might be a couple of worthy shots to include:

J37 Hy'Shqa

J41 Eclipse - my favorite whale! She's grown so much I wasn't even positive this was her at first

J37 Hy'shqa and calf J49 T'ilem I'nges have been very photogenic whales this summer - at least I've had lots of opportunities to photograph them! If you're wondering about the names, all the descendents of J14 Samish are given names in traditional naming ceremonies by the Samish Indian Nation. Hy'shqa is J14's daugher, and her name means "blessing" or "thank you". T'ilem I'nges is J14's first grandchild, and appropriately, his name means "singing grandchild".

J37 Hy'shqa and J49 T'ilem I'nges

Right after the J14s were the K14s, including adult male K26 Lobo:

Following the K14s were three of the K12s, and they got up to just past the lighthouse before stopping and milling for a while. They eventually headed back south, to join up with many more whales there were still south of Lime Kiln, and a few Ls went south later to join them.

On the 30th, all the whales that had remained off the south end - partial members of all three pods - headed west back out to the open ocean. Remaining in inland waters then were the traditional J-Pod "Group A" with L87 and the K14s. So interesting to have just one K-Pod matriline hanging out with J2 Granny's group. All the whales were making their way down Boundary Pass in the early afternoon, but then yet another split happened. The Js and L87 went right back up Swanson Channel, while the K14s turned south down Haro Strait towards San Juan Island. (By the way, if you're not familiar with the area and want to follow along when I'm referencing all these different places, back in 2008 I posted a map on my blog with all the common areas marked - check it out here.)

I was again at Lime Kiln waiting for them to approach, and I was blown away by the number of people at the park also patiently waiting for these four whales to arrive! Bucking a strong flood tide, the whales made very slow progress, but dozens of people stayed out in the harsh sunshine and chilly wind waiting and waiting and waiting. They were finally rewarded, as K14 Lea and her three offspring arrived, and slllllooooooowwwwly made their way south. I think it took them about two hours to really pass by Lime Kiln.

K26 Lobo ~ "The Lone Wolf" as titled by a friend of mine

So since J-Pod arrived on May 31st we've had all these different groupings of whales coming and going, with different numbers and different whales here all the time. I'm convinced their presence or absence ultimately has to do with fish, but I know they are socially and culturally complex animals, so their travel routes are probably not simple to explain. Still, I was curious just how well the number of whales present this year has been relating to Chinook salmon numbers, particularly the Albion test catch fishery that has been receiving so much attention from local whale watchers this season. That meant tonight it was time to put my data mining hat back on and see what I could come up with.

First of all, I did the best I could at reconstructing how many whales were here each day of the last two months. I knew I had to do this now - I do take some notes on what's going on and what I see, but the days really do start to blend together. So keep in mind the number of whales present each day is my best estimate. In my first graph, I compared this number (total number of whales in inland waters) to the catch per unit effort (CPUE) for that day on the Albion test catch fishery. Some people believe it's more accurate to compare delayed test catch numbers - for instance 1-4 days later, as it takes the salmon some time to travel from a place like Lime Kiln to the Albion test catch site - but because we don't really know how long this takes a fish, I decided to do a direct same-day comparison of whale numbers to test catch numbers. Here are the results:

X-axis shows the number of whales present in inland waters (ranging from 0 to 69, the most whales we've had "in" at once this year); Y-axis shows the Albion test fishery catch per unit effort value, which corrects how many fish they caught that day by how much effort they put into trying to catch fish. I added a blue trend line. The R-squared value, which is a statistical measure of how well data fit a regression line, is .23 - not excellent, but there's definitely some trend there. Makes sense - this graph basically says when there's more whales around, there's usually more fish around.

What the above graph doesn't capture, however, is how things have played out on a daily basis over these last two months. I wanted to see how the two values compared on a daily basis from May 31 to July 31, so this graph shows each value as it's own color on a bar graph.

The X-axis takes us from May 31st to July 31st of this year. Number of whales present in inland waters (or my best estimation of this number) is indicated by the blue lines and reference the left Y-axis. Albion Chinook test catch CPUE numbers are shown in the orange bars and values can be read off the right Y-axis. Again you see a faint trend of what you would expect - higher CPUE numbers generally translate into more whales present.

The Gang's All Here!

The whales were only gone for about three days, but it sure felt like a lot longer than that! It was with much excitement we all greeted the news that were "residents inbound" on Saturday evening. I went out and met some friends, hoping to see them. The first whales that reached San Juan Island - K-Pod - hit land at about False Bay and went south. We were all ready to call it a night when we noticed one of the boats heading home to Victoria stopped in the middle of the strait. There were more whales out there! After watching the sun set, we went to Lime Kiln as some L-Pod whales made their way slowly north in the almost-dark. There wasn't enough light for photos, but I shot this short video with my iPhone to capture a little of the feel of the moment.

Hoping the whales wouldn't go north or west in the night, I went out to Lime Kiln on Sunday morning (the 27th). Good decision! I was only there about half an hour before we started to see dorsal fins to the south. The whales continued to pass by for the next two and a half hours. It soon became apparent it was more than just Ks and Ls here, there were so many whales! That was confirmed for sure when J27 Blackberry popped up:

Blackberry was traveling with his sister J31 Tsuchi, K27 Deadhead, and Deadhead's calf K44 Ripple. That's one thing I love about superpods - it's always so interesting to see who associates with whom when everyone gets all mixed up!

K27 Deadhead

K44 Ripple

My prize shot of the morning - a gorgeous spyhop from K27 Deadhead. Prints available here.

It's great light to watch wildlife in the morning on the west side, and there were more than whales about. The first whales were very spread out, and there were plenty of birds and seals to watch in the breaks. One highlight was when this great blue heron flew by:

The seals were actively fishing, and while this was looking back into the light, it was awesome to see one seal surface with a salmon in its mouth and another one lunging after it as if to steal it (he didn't succeed):

You would think after all these years I would have seen whales from just about everywhere in Lime Kiln, but not so! I usually go to one of a few favorite spots, but on this morning decided to try watching from a new vantage point. It led to some different looks, particularly when some whales circled back to come closer to the kelp.

Two of 'em heading right at ya! Bonus points if you can find the third whale in this photo...

After every group of whales, we'd look south, and see more blows coming! It was just wave after wave of whales!

J40 Suttles, J14 Samish, and J45 Se-Yi-Chn

J14 Samish, J45 Se-Yi-Chn, and J49 T'ilem In'ges

L87 Onyx

I decided to take another video clip of one "wave", and it happened to include a nice pec slap from J19 Shachi. I had to let the edit run a little long to catch the great reaction of the girl on the rocks at the end:

I was really surprised when some unusual whales popped up - the L54 sub-group! This small group of L-Pod whales, for whatever reason, visits inland waters a lot more rarely than the rest of L-Pod. This was their first time "in" this season, actually, though they had been seen off the outer coast earlier this year. It was really nice to see them, and led to some of the best pictures I've ever gotten of some of these whales!

L84 Nyssa - very pleased to see he's found someone to latch on to in the L54s since he has no living family members

L54 Ino and L117 Keta show just how close to shore the whales can come at Lime Kiln

And it STILL wasn't the end - there were more L-Pod whales after that (as well as other groups way offshore during this whole time).

L82 Kasatka and L116 Finn (just starting to surface)

I determined that it looked like all the Southern Residents but the L12 sub-group were present, so that's about 69 whales! A lot of confusion followed however, as small groups went north and south and north and south (mostly not by Lime Kiln, but a few did), that by the end of the day no one was entirely sure who ended up where. But really, it didn't matter, because they stayed, and they were everywhere!