Saturday, March 25, 2017

3-25-17 The Island Was Surrounded By Orcas Today

Saturday, March 25th
...it began with a sighting of orcas nearing the northeast side of San Juan Island...
...I headed over to Ruben Tarte Park to see if I could see them...way in the distance I could see a couple blows...and right in front of me, all over the place, were harbor porpoise...

...and oh, what a trip...wow! about sums it up...


...just about every behavior you could think of, by the whales, and so many various lighting ops - quite the trip!...




...and the beautiful, peaceful, calm images of them...

...we left the whales and headed up to Spieden Island...

...back at the dock I headed for my car hoping to make it to the southern end of San Juan Channel...

...stopped to fuel the car before returning home...walk in the house, turn on the speaker to the hydrophones that had been recording, and almost immediately I hear J Pod calls! yikes! J Pod had come back in...
...then I remembered that Andy told me that there was an opening for salmon fishing...and one more thing I remembered - I had heard those fish sounds or burps on the hydrophones last night!  duh...no wonder J Pod came back in...they got the announcements too.
...last year the hydrophones had been relocated a bit farther out and deeper, so now when you hear the whales on the hydrophones you might think they are closer than they actually are.  It used to be that you could NOT hear their echolocation clicks from much distance and now you can...
...this time instead of heading for Lime Kiln I went to County Park hoping to have not missed the leaders...
...here's who I saw...
...and here are the others that I saw...instead of IDing them I thought you might like to practice...


...they were very spread out, and I only got IDs on 7, and saw a few more...
...then things got quiet and a while later more calls began...were these the ones coming back down or were they the rest of J Pod and presumably Onyx L-87 going up?  Another mystery we'll have to wait to resolve
And here's about how I felt at the end of this day
...there certainly was, and still is, a smile on my face...

an add: a wondering...

 
 

1 comment:

Kathy said...

Fun post! Thank you.