4-6-15 More About Baby J-52

I realized that my very best image of baby J-52 was all over the internet, yet I neglected to put it and others on my blog!...so...

...the fetal folds can be seen clearly in the above image...below is a closer look from another angle...they are very deep looking, the most obvious I have even seen...researchers said this calf was just a couple days old...

...well on March 27th while out on Maya's Westside Charters with the whales in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in flat calm seas, we left the whales at 3:44...looking back on that encounter, the J16s were far behind the rest of J pod...J pod was all grouped up and eventually the J16s caught up to them...from looking at my images later, at that time there did not appear to be any new calf with the J16s - seen from head on as they approached, from their left sides as they passed by, and from behind and their right sides as they continued on - there was no new calf seen with them...like the researches said the calf was only a couple days old on March 30th.
...and then when you see the two babies on either side of Slick J-16...

...well, back to that question...'who's the mom?'
...we all hope to see J-52 the next time J pod returns and hopefully it won't be too long a wait...
...saddle patches don't seem to have much of a relationship when it comes from moms to offspring...so when I saw this open saddle on J-52, I was so surprised to see how much it resembled Echo's J-42...

...and the other side is also about identical to Echo's as well...

...Echo is only eight years old...that would be pretty young if you asked me...
...so that left Alki J-36 and Suttles J-40...the entire time out there Suttles, from my eyes, was the 'support person'...she was at the back of the group, estimating 50 yards...and sometimes J-50 was ahead of her- by herself - and behind Slick, Echo, Alki and baby J-52, by about 50 yards (difficult to estimate distance but it was an obvious distance at a steady pace - i.e. not in the manner of trying to catch up)...

...at no time, when they were traveling, did I see Suttles even near baby J-52..(for lack of a better way to explain it, it seemed that she was like the playground person who keeps tabs on all the little kids...well, maybe her job was to keep tabs on J-50 - it seemed anyway...there was only that very last picture on my We Know Who Our Moms Are post that showed them all together...but from the angle it still looked like Suttles may have been behind the rest of them...it makes sense to me, with another new baby someone had to look after J-50...

...at the beginning of our encounter, Mike was with them when they went through Active Pass...

...J-50 was in there too, but Suttles, well she was behind them...

...then when they stopped that first time he backed off and looked like he was waiting - it was very unusual...it was soon after that that I discovered there was a new baby in the group...so that explains some of Mike's behavior (to me anyway)...at some points he was a quarter mile or more off from the rest of the group, but he didn't appear to be foraging...

...maybe all this gives more clues was to who the mom might be...I just hope we actually will get to find out when J pod returns...

more posts about J-52:

3-30-15 A Whale of A Surprise! 

4-1-15 We Know Who Our Moms Are!

note:
...someone had inquired about the belly markings on the calf who was being pushed up by Slick J-16...that there was a distinct black mark that wasn't showing on my image...however, my image was pretty blown out...the researchers at the Center for Whale Research identified those belly markings as belonging to calf J-50...