6-16-14 J Pod - All Present and Accounted For!

Monday, June 16th
...awakened!...(beware - it's loud!)

...one thing I noticed is that during the day the J16s and J22s (or J10s) didn't make any (or hardly any) J pod signature calls...but in the middle of the night these calls were mainly J pod signature calls - that's why I think they were greeting one another...
...their calls only were heard over the Orca Sound hydrophones but not Lime Kiln giving me no clue as to which way they might have gone...
...it was 8:30a.m. when I saw whales coming up island!

...but who was present?...anticipation until they got a bit closer...

...Polaris J-28, Star J-46, Princess Angeline J-17....and Mako J-39!!!  What is he doing there?
...the rest of the J17s were present, Mako's sister Tsuchi J-31 was present - but their brother, Blackberry J-27, was with Granny's group!...also with them were 'The Cookies"...
...this is Oreo J-22 and DoubleStuf J-34...

...Slick J-16 and her family were not present...now where in the world were they?
...out on Maya's Westside Charters for a late morning trip...this group of whales were continuing to move up...going against a strong ebb tide...

...they were not surface active other than for breathing and continued at a steady pace, though slow, up Boundary Pass...(we learned later that once they got to East Pt. they began high speed porpoising toward Pt. Roberts-thanks Simon!)
...while we were with this group, the T65As showed up near Friday Harbor, the other J pod whales - except for the J16s - were at the bottom end of San Juan Island coming up, and other Ts were seen over near Victoria! ...AND Simon found the J16s up past East Pt.!...There were whales everywhere and we still don't have K or L pods in here!
...out again on the Peregrine for another trip, we met up with Granny J-2's group just as they were coming up to Open Bay, outside of Snug Harbor...
...Blackberry J-27 and Onyx L-87 were far offshore, though it was interesting to see it was Blackberry who moved in closer to Granny...and then on up to 'meet' the ferry...

...behind them were Shachi J-19 and her just about 9 year old Eclipse J-41 and Samish J-14 and her kids and grand kid J-49...

 

...once we saw Granny's group we knew that all of J pod was accounted for and here. That's the first time since June 3rd! It's a big deal!...of course we'll have to wait to see why all this is going on...and then again, we will never know for sure...
...we left Granny and her group and headed over to see the T65As, who had come up from Friday Harbor...
...this baby, T65A5 was first seen on March 27th, by us while on the Peregrine with David at the helm...

...one noted difference today was that both groups of J pod, when we saw them, were in a resting or slow travel mode, much different from their behaviors of a couple days ago...