Monday, November 17th
...at about 2 a.m. Transient calls on the Lime Kiln hydrophones...only for a few minutes and very distant...
...two nights ago at about 11pm I heard K pod calls...not sure about Ls or Js...but I didn't know a direction...so when I heard, via the grapevine, that Simon of Ocean Ecoventures got word that lots of whales had exited Active Pass going north yesterday morning (11/16)...well, that must have been them...but it was still a mystery as to who and where...
...then at 8:45 a.m. this morning (11/17), I'm talking to Ivan of the Western Prince who is telling me that Traci saw Residents at Turn Pt. and they were heading down...oh, goodie..."wait, I hear calls right now, but they are faint!"...so some were coming from the north...but were there others to the south?...throw on the winter clothes, watch the icy roads and get to the park to go find out...
...all I did was wait and wait but no whales in sight...then my phone rang and I was soon on the Center for Whale Research boat, Chimo, with Dave Ellifrit...we knew that whales were spread out...but that far?!
...one here, one there...they would surface once and be gone...who was present?...
...the first whale we saw was Onyx L-87 - ATTENTION PLEASE! - he is the one who travels with J pod and mainly Group A of J pod...so we started to look for the J pod whales...nope...not over there, or over there...
...by the end of the time with the whales we knew that we had not seen any J pod whales and at that time we didn't know of anyone else who had either...later I learned that both Traci and Monika had gotten a picture of Granny J-2! what?...wild!...she and Onyx L-87...no other J pod whales were seen at all by anyone! - I think!
...click here for the Encounter page on the Center for Whale Research site for the write up by Dave and some of our pictures from the encounter...this encounter may not be posted just yet, but you can check CWR's encounter page... (11/18) Tuesday, 3 a.m. J pod calls loud and clear on Orca Sound hydrophones....
they were there for a while and then stopped...
...after re-listening to the recording I heard faint J pod calls behind some loud ship noise...
...then at 4:10 a.m. they started up again on the Orca Sound hydrophones again...
...and they had an accompaniment - a humpback whale!!!
both were over the Orca Sound hydrophones...that was at about 6 a.m.
...it's pretty wild out there...
...I spotted the humpback whale from shore at about 8 a.m.
...at about 10 a.m. five California sea lions swam by in front of my place...
...but no killer whales did I see today!
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