7-15-13 The L22s Make Big Splashes on Day 14!

Monday, July 15th
...the L22s are still here...that makes 14 of the last 15 days...
...out on Maya's Westside Charters today...on our midday trip we saw the L22s and a Minke whale...there's something about huge rolls of fresh hay and killer whales in the same image that just doesn't compute!

...at one point Solstice was doing some inverted tail lobs...(he must have been 'warming up' for later)...

...on our afternoon trip we saw some humpbacks...on the way to see them I was telling the folks about the Elwha Valley...didn't realize we'd be just about there...

...there were three other humpbacks who joined up with this one...Split Fin was one who was there...not sure on the others just yet...

...we left them and headed back to San Juan island to see the L22s...and we watched something unusual occur...
...Spirit L-22 and Solstice L-89 were about a half mile offshore, moving down island...Skana L-79 was inshore and a bit ahead of them...
...Solstice began doing high tail lobs...

...it was just about on every surfacing...Spirit was next to him and she did not...
...Solstice's tail lobs continued and I started counting...in total during this short encounter of about 30 minutes, there were at least 23 tail lobs by Solstice...
...Skana tail lobbed a few times and then his became more intense...

...a few surfacings later all three were close, looking as if they might join up and continue their down island slow travel...
...BUT all of a sudden they changed direction and were making a bee line off shore...we only saw one surfacing and then we waited for them to surface...
...about a minute later Skana surfaced and tail lobbed...
...then someone breached (either Solstice or Spirit)...
...then Spirit breached twice...

...and then Solstice breached once...both totally surprising a boat!

...Skana was on the other side of the boat that Spirit and Solstice just surprised...and this time Skana was going to surprise them!

...at first I was wondering if their tail lobs were a way they were communicating with one another, for whatever reason...
...maybe they were trying to scare up some fish...
...but after their deliberate move toward a boat, I wondered if they were just playing around! (they passed by our boat and went to a boat that was actually further from shore)
...no one had been in anyone's path...the few boats on scene were stationery...no boat had time to move because there was only that one surfacing and no telling where they would surface next...

...no sooner had they done this, then they continued on a down island trend, as if they hadn't just had a few 'wild and crazy moments'!...