7-28-15 It Was A Four Chapter Day

Tuesday, July 28th  
First:  Have you made your phone call to the White House today?  202-456-1111  Ask him to breach the 4 lower Snake River Dams, save the world's greatest salmon producing river system, save the Southern Resident Orcas, save the Snake/Columbia River salmon, and save taxpayers millions of dollars.  If you already called, call again!!  Refer to the previous post for more info.

If the salmon are not saved and we lose the Southern Resident killer whales there won't be anymore encounters at all...just think of that...horrible...

Chapter 1 
...today provided an interesting peek into the lives of the whales...
...first Granny J-2, Lea K-14, J16s, the K13s, the K12s, and the K14s came up island passing the lighthouse early this morning...but they didn't come up in exactly that order...and that grouping was quite unusual...
..where were the J14s, part of Granny's group, who are always with her?...that was my first question...
...the whales were going against an oncoming current, so they were moving slowly...

...Sequim K-12 and Saturna K-43 her youngest, came along...

 

...I began looking for Rainshadow K-37...but I could not find him...at least not yet...I could see a couple whales in the distance still coming up...Sequim had passed the lighthouse, getting to the point north and then she turned, came back to just north of the lighthouse and logged for about a minute...

...she was then down for at least three minutes...then she began a repetitive call...it was clear that she was making that call as there were no other whales in front of or near the lighthouse (the call was loud).
For several minutes she slowly moved down island...Sekiu K-22 and Tika K-33 were approaching...
...and then Rainshadow K-37 came into view...he was traveling with Kelp K-42...Sequim's repetitive call stopped...and on the next surfacing mom and son were traveling up island together...

...then the two moms and their boys surfaced together...

...by the way Sekiu is Sequim's daughter and Tika her grandson...this stuff happens all the time out there, we just don't get to see it that often...those whales continued up island...it was now just shortly after 9 a.m....


Chapter 2
10:40 a.m. they turn around and are coming back down...

...now I would have a chance to confirm who was present when they went up...or at least I hoped I would be able to...
Slick J-16 and family came by first...they were some of the first to go up and now are way ahead of the others who are coming down...
...they were going with the current, passing by very quickly...

...no J14s in the group, no L-87 in the group...they must be down island somewhere...

Chapter 3
12:45 up island they came, in one large group...all of J pod, Onyx L-87, the K12s, K13s, and the K14s...

...they turned around right in front of the lighthouse and went back down...Granny J-2 was in the lead with Onyx L-87 and the J14s...

...and the rest of them followed...

Chapter 4 the last chapter of this day...
...late in the afternoon the J22s came up island, spread far and wide...now that's only 3 whales...Oreo J-22 and DoubleStuf J-34 were at times close together, but Cookie J-38 was a mile or more off shore from them...for about 45 minutes they were heard echolocating over the Lime Kiln hydrophones, and only a couple calls later during this encounter...they were taking long dives...one dive lasted five minutes, DoubleStuf surfacing in just about the same place he had gone down...

...eventually they moved slowly back down island...

...to wrap up the day...calls from J, K, and an L pod call (assuming Onyx L-87)...came over the Lime Kiln hydrophones starting at about 10:15pm...
...I heard their calls for over an hour...but could not come to any conclusion as to which way they might have gone...I would imagine it would be in the direction of where they might find food.