7-18-15 It Ended With A Magnificent Sunset

Saturday, July 18th
...out on Peregrine in the morning we head west to meet up with a large group of incoming whales...it was quite a long distance to travel, but after hearing where Granny J-2 and her group were the Capt. thought this would be closer...however, the whales were in bound at a much slower pace than had been anticipated!
...Blackberry J-27, DoubleStuf J-34, and some of their family members were the first whales we saw...then Mike J-26 appeared...

...the water was choppy, the whales were spread, and I wondered what someone's definition of 'large group' actually was...it looked like the rest of J pod was coming in and some K pod whales, but we did not see any L pod whales except for Onyx L-87...
...members of the K13 family, Deadhead K-27 and her offspring, Ripple K-44 appeared...so the seven members of the K13s are out here...somewhere...

...then Onyx L-87 surfaced!...

...he and the K13s had left the area last night...I had last heard his call at about 1:30 in the morning...and now I wondered if maybe he had been communicating with or calling out to see if anyone would respond...

...in the morning Granny J-2, the J19s, J14s, and the K14s were coming down Bellingham Channel, then across the bottom of Lopez Island and eventually up the west side midday and turned and west back down island...

...by the late afternoon, that group we had seen coming in, made it to the west side...most stayed down island except for the J16s and the J22s, who went up island and then came back down at sunset...

...there were some unusual visitors to the park...haven't a clue...

...a slice of the moon with Venus to the right and friends on the rocks...

...needless to say it was a day filled with whales, confusing to keep track of who was where, and wondering just who might be around in the morning...