5-25-13 More Transients and a Different Humpback Today!

Saturday, May 25th
...I saw these whales May 12, 2012 and May 11, 2011...and since they showed up today - May 25, 2013, maybe they are giving us a clue as to how much the calendar is off this year...by maybe two weeks???

...we went out west of Victoria to meet incoming whales - 4 Transients - this afternoon, on Maya's Westside Charters...it took until I got home to be able to figure out just who it was...
...a sprouter (male), a female, and two juveniles...
...a few moments after we arrived on scene they went after a Harbor seal...that Harbor seal sure hung in there a long time before he became an afternoon meal...

...the Harbor seal was about to charge the whale...

...T77B lunging after it...

...one of the kids, either T77C or T77D, and the Harbor seal...

...I thought that maybe they had made the kill, but in a few moments the Harbor seal surfaced again...

...more lunging and a few minutes later the whales began to move off, then T77 surfaced swimming backwards...I'm not very good at stringing images into a clip, but this will show you T77 surfacing tail first, and using her tail to move herself backwards...then T77B surfaces coming towards her...

...she had the meal...and pretty soon some gulls came swooping down...yep, lunch had been served...
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...while we were out there with the killer whales, we learned of a humpback whale coming north in San Juan Channel, passing Friday Harbor...on our next trip we were able to catch up the the humpback up by Sucia Island...

 ...we heard the humpback had been breaching and breaching and just wouldn't quit...we missed that, but she was showing the underside of her tail when she sounded (taking a deep dive)...giving us clear ID shots...BCY0409 I believe is her ID...
...a glimpse of what we missed- this image is from last summer - July 2012 - when she was doing a lot of breaching while moving north up the west side of San Juan Island!

...another interesting note about her, is that last year I was told that she had been seen in Hawaii in January 2012...