Tagging Whales is NOT Part of Nature

Though it's been quiet because J, K and L pods have been gone....way out the strait...like Neah Bay out...it's still been an amazing few days....I went out on the boat on Sunday...the captain told me there had been a Minke sighting in San Juan Channel, but it was a couple hours before...probably won't find it...they surface 4 or 5 few times and then often dive for several minutes and sometimes they just disappear 'right in front of your eyes'!...well I got so excited because right away I thought I saw the Minke way off in the distance...they look like a log on the surface because their bodies are so long and then all of a sudden a little dorsal fin appears and then you realize you were looking at a whale!......well, it was too far in the distance to see the dorsal fin, but I thought I saw it surface twice....then no more.....we 'assumed' (there's that word again!) that it was going south, so Ivan and I scanned and scanned but couldn't find it...I felt bad cause I got hopes up and then nothing...but wait!...Ivan saw it too! ah-ha! I was right!! it was a Minke...and it was moving back and forth, almost in a triangled area ....so while we had been looking south, the Minke had been going north!

...then yesterday I learned that Mr. Floppy Fin - T-19B actually - and the girls were near Race Rocks...transients are so very unpredictable and Race Rocks is quite a ways away...so I really didn't think that they would show up...

...I learned unfortunately (my opinion) that this male transient had a satellite tracking device shot into his dorsal fin - so now all anyone had to do was go to the website and find out where he was. ..
I really need to voice my opinion that I think it is wrong for researchers to have tagged this whale - and any other whale for that matter - with a tracking device... tagging what's that? - well they shoot a tag into the dorsal fin of the whale...I didn't see but heard that when they did that to T-19B, the whale spent the next hour doing everything he could to avoid the boats...I call shooting something into the body of a whale invasive and it's just wrong...wrong....wrong......it also brings up a lot of questions and here are just a few - why are they doing this to transients? do they think people won't care? is this just practice for doing it to the Southern Residents - i.e. establishing a precedent? NOAA has enforcement on the water to watch the behaviors of the boaters and give tickets if necessary...aren't they just inviting more people to go on out there - after all they can find the whales' location pretty easy now???? and why are your tax dollars paying one Dept in NOAA to publicize where the transients are and paying another Dept in NOAA - your tax dollars again - to give tickets and do enforcement... 'your tax dollars at work folks'...not a good use of $ if you ask me...okay I'll get off my soap box now...but one last thing...please, please don't let them do this to the residents!

if you want to voice your opinion or give feedback you can send an email to brad.hanson@noaa.gov


back to...We've Got Whales!

...sitting at home working on a project with a friend...it's a windy afternoon - well actually it was about 6:30pm...we were done for the day and were talking...but I kept looking down the strait...hum, "was that a blow I just saw? No, probably just blow off the white caps, - oh my goodness it was a blow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I could hardly believe it... "We got whales", I said...and I think the reply was "No, really, where?" ...grab the binocs, grab a coat (already that time of year) and we watched..It was Mr. Floppy Fin and the girls! Wow, so they did come all the way in...and I didn't even need a tracking device to find out - and I won't go to their site to even look cause that just supports something that I feel is wrong, and I won't do that...

...we watched and watched..off Low Island, which is in the middle of Andrews Bay about 1/3 mile south of my place, there was a disturbance in the water in the kelp beds...we kept watching and once again I thought I saw a dorsal fin coming toward us...but then nothing...
...Mr. F.F. was at the outer edge of the bay moving north, when 'all of a sudden' one of the females surfaced inside the bay, between us and Low Island - I did see that fin...then Mr. F.F. changed direction and moved toward her and the other female...I think there were 3 Ts in total but could have been 4...well they had another snack - I call it Tss - Transient Seal Sushi.
...well, that's what they often eat and this is a time of year when there are a lot of young harbor seals...now that is part of the nature...tagging whales is not (oops, sorry got back on the soap box again)...