3-16-15 Everything So Far Away!

March 14th
...on a stormy day, March 14th...I snapped a picture of a tug escorting a tanker south through Haro Strait on it's way out to sea and places beyond...

 ...I was glad to see that...and thought about how the Washington State legislators made that happen several years ago.  It was because of concerns about the environment.  Now I wonder if they will help to make happen the lower Snake River dams a thing of the past - i.e. help to get them taken down...
...there is a connection between those rivers, the salmon and the ecosystem all throughout the Pacific Northwest and even down into California...
...how does one get people to realize that even though those dams might not be directly in your own 'backyard' that they really are, because there is an impact connected to here - salmon and the more than 137 species that rely on them - really!


...later that day...at 5:00 p.m., J Pod 'spoke clearly' over the Lime Kiln hydrophones...they were not loud but they were here somewhere...
..I was off and running to the park to see if I could possibly pick them up in that choppy water...they had come around the bottom of Discovery Island and were heading up Haro Strait on the Canada side...
...proof of location - left is tip of Discovery Island, the right side if the tip of Chatham Island and in the distance is a ship
...they were so far offshore...there really is one whale in this image!

...they were on the Lime Kiln and the Orca Sound hydrophones for the next several hours...actually the last time I heard them was after 1:00 a.m. 3-15 over the Lime Kiln hydrophones...but it's still up for wonder as to which way they went...

...things were quiet in the killer whale department on March 15th, but the first of this season's humpbacks, Big Mama BCY0324, was still around!

...March 16th things began to happen...whales were seen heading in from the west and before you know it they were on the west side.  Ivan of the Western Prince located them once they were in Haro Strait...he 'handed them off' to me to watch...he'd be back out on their zodiac with passengers later...then Dave from the Center for Whale Research got to them...

...oh, so far from shore...

...the Ts were quiet over the Lime Kiln hydrohones...a few hours later, I heard some calls from them over the Orca Sound hydrophones and figured they were on to something...I found out later they had taken a harbor porpoise...