9-29-17 Day 12 of J Pod Here in the Inland Waters

Friday, September 29th
...on Thursday, the 28th, J Pod was in Puget Sound and the L Pod whales were on their way west...
...and then, on Friday morning, J Pod was leaving Puget Sound and heading...which way???...Up!...ever so slowly...it started out as a calm morning...

... by mid-afternoon it was still nice at Lime Kiln, but I chose the wind and went down island to see if I could find the whales in order to know which way they were going...when I did see them it was from the big pull-out/overlook just south of South Beach...well, actually I saw their splashes mostly...it was windy with very rough seas...

...with binoculars (always have your binoculars handy) of course...what a blast it looked like they were having in those rough seas...they get very surface active in seas like this - sometimes, that is...
...then up island, hoping they were continuing that direction too...

...I stopped a few place along the way to see if they were still coming up...yep!...
...-then on to the park and wait...while waiting with a few other people, we watched one person, who was waiting at the south end of the park...since we couldn't see behind that huge rock that person was standing on and we could only see the person's legs, because the person was blocked by a tree...but that person gave us an indicator...
...then some others appeared...someone near us asked, "Who are they?"  I replied with, "Those are what you'd call an 'indicator species'!"  Sort of how some people tell me that when they see my car in town they know there are no whales on the west side!...well, this time these indicator species were letting us know that whales were soon to appear. Thanks!!

...it wasn't long before I heard the first call...the seas had gotten rough up here too and the lighting was unusual, which added to the challenge of finding the whales who belonged to those vocals I was hearing...

...here's what it looked like when you looked up...like wow!

...and Alki J-36 burst through the surface at just the right moment when the lighting on the water was astounding...

...I could see some of the J16s going by...then I saw Alki J-36 a ways behind them and with Alki, it looked like Suttles J-40 was with them...Blackberry J-27 came by...and a few others...but then it got dark and time to head for home, quickly, so I could listen to the hydrophones...