8-8-15 Residents and Transients and a Rainy Afternoon

Saturday, August 8th
...lately it seems each day is more and more confusing - for everyone!...except the whales, that is...
...Transients showed up coming up island late this morning at the same time Residents were coming down island...
...the Transients made a surprise appearance near the lighthouse and soon moved off shore a mile or two...
...the Residents stopped at Open Bay for a while, a common place they will forage, provided there is salmon there...
...after the other evening when all of J pod and all of K pod went north in two large mixed groups during daylight hours - and then some came back down island in the dark...no one knew who was still here...
...well today we got to find out...only the K12s and the K13s were present as they came down past the lighthouse...that's interesting because they were part of the lead group that Granny J-2, Onyx L-87, the J14s and the K14s were part of...

...Skagit and Sequim were out in front...

...they weren't close to shore on this cloudy day...

...while the K12s and the K13s were passing the lighthouse the Transients were a mile or so to the west in Haro Strait...they continued up and moved across the strait to Open Bay where they stayed for a while before they turned and came back down...
...the Ts - T002Cs, T34s, T37, and T37Bs a total of 9 whales were a few hundred yards from shore as they approached the lighthouse...it was now raining...

...a speed boat was coming up island, in the same path of the on-coming whales who had just taken a dive...the boat continued at speed, not sure if the person at the helm had a clue whales were there or not...but we watched and waited...the boat passed by...we waited and waited...a few minutes later one of the juveniles surfaced right in front of us, right where we had estimated they would have if that boat had not been there...
...then the rest of the whales surfaced, one by one, changing direction for a moment or two and then went on their way...

...T02C2 has scoliosis, curvature of the spine, which is why his/her dorsal fin looks so unusual...

...speeding boats over top of whales is NOT something anyone wants to see and I would imagine the whales would prefer that they didn't either...
...I don't know, but it appeared that the whales waited until the 'coast was clear' before they surfaced...and then went on their way down island...