Sunday, June 5, 2016

6-5-16 It Was a 5:20AM Wake Up Call

Sunday, June 5th

link to a Short clip of the early morning

...it was J Pod and I suspect Granny J-2 as she often will make it known J Pod is here...a very brief call, but loud, over the Lime Kiln hydrophones at 5:20 a.m....
...healing up from tooth/mouth surgery stuff last Tuesday...today was just perfect...I was well enough I could actually 'get a move on' and get to the lighthouse...
...but when I did there were no whales in sight and no calls on the hydrophones...
...after waiting a good long while instead of heading to the parking lot I decided to walk along the shoreline to 'the wall' as it is called at the south end of the park...and there in the distance, way in the distance, I saw dorsal fins!
...you'd think I'd never seen an orca before...well, it sort of seemed like it...J Pod had been gone since May 13th...
...so...back to the lighthouse to wait and hope they would come up...
...I was assuming it was J Pod...
...when they got to the light the J17s, J22s passed by...and continued on up...or so it seemed...DoubleStuf J-34 and his mom, Oreo J-22 stopped about halfway past the cove just north of the light and they turned and headed back down...huh?...they were moving very slowly...a few minutes later the J11s  and Cookie J-38 came up - that's all of Group B!...





...and then...and then...Cappuccino K-21, Opus K-16, and Sonata K-35...
...there were lots more whales coming up...
so I switched to video for a bit...
...I left and went up island and found that the lighting was much nicer but the whales were quite a way offshore...the evaporation coming off the water made for distance images to be very crinkly looking...but at least I could still see who was present...




...and it was only 7:30 a.m.

...out on Peregrine for an afternoon trip...we meet up with the L Pod whales...they had changed direction and went back down island...and then turned and came up island!...many people got to meet L-123 for the first time...this baby was first seen last November but no confirmed until December, and since then L Pod has been gone.

...and then it was only a couple hours later when they came back down island...

...it is good to have them back and we hope they are finding food...and plenty of it.
  






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