10-15-17 The Whales Came In and They Ate!

Sunday, October 15, 2017
...a sunshiny morning, no clouds for the day...by noon there were whales coming up island!
...what a surprise and it was J Pod too!...and the L54s and Nyssa L-84 and Wave Walker L-88 had come in with J Pod and Onyx L-87.  Now that is extra special...
..Nyssa was way far offshore when I was first taking pictures...I had no idea it was him until I looked at my images later!

...a while later he was foraging in one direction while Mike J-26 was going in the opposite direction...

...there were salmon and that's why the whales were here today...perhaps again tomorrow but that's 'salmon dependent'...

...it was about 12:30 when they were off Lime Kiln...spread way out - inshore and up to a couple miles offshore...they were spread from the north to the south...eventually the last of the whales passed by at about 1:30...

...whale watching boats were way north but they weren't going too far...

...

...there was a disturbance to the encounter...it was a boat that was coming down island very fast and it wasn't paying attention.  In the State of Washington, just in the last couple months they passed a law about Distracted Driving...how about making a law against Distracted Boaters.  This is about the closest I ever seen...

...it took the boater a few minutes to slow down, well, actually he stopped and watched the whales...at one point I was feeling that people, including me, on shore shouldn't have motioned the driver the slow down, but you can't just sit there and watch a potential problem happen or do you?
...when he decided to leave he started up and went 'at speed'  - sort of like peeling out of a parking lot...looks like there needs to be some education about noise pollution too...

...back to enjoying the whales as they continued down island...

...when I last saw the whales they were a good way down island and so were the purse seiners...wonder where they will be in the morning...same place?

...if you saw Southern Residents today, consider it very fortunate...the whales need salmon filled days more than just once in a while...