5-27-16 Catching Up On Transient Encounters

5-21-16
...representative of the multiple groups who have been in the waters around the San Juan Islands for several days...on their 6th day in here...they spent several hours in San Juan Channel...they were going against a strong incoming current, so they didn't get too far...lucky for us on Peregrine because the seas were not nice at the south end of the channel...oh, they could have moved on through that current if they wanted to...evidently they didn't...on this day T93 and T97 had gone down the channel ahead of the group of moms and kids - T36As, T65As, T65Bs, and the T99s...

...but this large group decided not to follow T93 and T97...at least at that point because they flipped and went north again...
5-22-16
...T93 and T97 were seen way south, closer to Admirality Inlet area and the others were way, way to the north, out of range from here...
5-23-16
...so when a whole bunch of them plus a few others showed up coming down from the north...it was a shore day for me, so the wait was a long one...
...the T101s along with some of the moms and kids, plus the T123s came down Haro Strait, spread in groups as they went down...T101 passing along the west side...

...the T65As and the T36As passed Lime Kiln lighthouse pretty close to shore...that's the most activity of the killer whale kind there since May 13th...friends from Switzerland were there and got some nice video of them as they passed on by!
5-24-16
...many whales heading west close to the Port Angeles side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca...but then someone spotted the T123s close to Victoria and they were coming back in...thank you very much!...out on Peregrine with Capt. Andy at the helm, we met the T123s as they were getting closer to entering Haro Strait from the Strait of Juan de Fuca...

...Lime Kiln lighthouse way far in the distance...

...one of the passengers was asking where was a good place to see a bald eagle...how about just as we were arriving back into the harbor!

5-25-16
...a two trip (afternoon and later afternoon) day on Peregrine with Capt. Jim at the helm we head north to - guess who - the T123s!...we didn't have long with them...but I did get a good look at T123As newly acquired scratches...

...on our second trip...we headed back north, hoping to locate some other transients that were reported to be coming down across the Strait of Georgia...it was a long search...we overshot them but another boat picked them up...all that scanning was hard work for all those passengers who aren't used to looking at choppy water and for whales that might or might not be there...
...but the end result was that they did get to see those whales...my images showed that present were T86A1, T124A, T124A1, T124A3 and T124A4...it had been reported earlier that there were 10 whales present...maybe some had split off earlier...