9-9-13 What A Day With Transients!

Monday, September 9th
..."whales!" I hear hollered from my cell phone...then with a faint "I think"...oh, my, off to the park anyway, just in case...
...missed them...back up island...it wasn't long before I saw some whales off shore...looked like Transients with those pointy dorsal fins, but I just wouldn't 'call it' yet...then T137 surfaced in much closer...thank you very much...
...out on Maya's Westside Charters as soon as Capt. Jim could round up the passengers for the morning trip, and off we went...the Center for Whale Research was on scene with the T36As and T37Bs...soon one of our passengers spotted the group of the T137s, heading up Haro Strait toward Turn Pt...
...one of the groups surprised a Steller sea lion, who took off as fast as he could...

...they rounded Turn Pt. at Stuart Island...

...not long after they had all come together and were close along the north side of Stuart Island...

...they stopped...two whales logged for close to a minute...

...then someone spyhopped and the 'cat nap' was over...

...they then moved on and stopped at the entrance to Prevost Harbor (Stuart Island) and spent the next 30 minutes or more working the entrance before moving off shore and heading???...it was time for us to leave and head back to the harbor...thanks Capt. Jim for putting in the hydrophones...often the transients are completely silent...not today!

...we had an afternoon trip and saw an entirely different group of Ts...the T41s, T109As, and T12A the big male...

...they displayed an entirely different method of hunting from the group we saw in the morning...

...slinking around the reefs and harbor seal haul outs...they were either taking seals and eating them without any fanfare, as is often seen, or this group is very inept at hunting :)...but I doubt that is the case!

All day long as we watched transients, J and K pods were north at the Fraser River...they had started to come down but turned and went back up...like why come back down when there is more salmon to be had up there...