...October 30th...in my last post J Pod calls had been on the Lime Kiln hydrophones very, very briefly...that was it...
...October 31st...they were evidently not seen anywhere...
...November 1st...they were heard over the Port Townsend hydrophones late in the afternoon...and nothing after that...
...November 2nd...today...stormy day...nothing on the Port Townsend or the Lime Kiln hydrophones...AND THEN...4:32pm, J Pod calls 'burst' over the Lime Kiln hydrophones! Wow! What?! They were in Haro Strait...but where...
...off at a run to Lime Kiln to see if I could find them...
...as I was listening to their calls, I heard some K Pod 'kitten' sounding call...I also heard a few of the L Pod 'up-tick' call (S19)...and of course J Pod calls...
...The L54 group makes the 'kitten' call too, but these calls continued on for so long, that it seemed that some K Pod whales were present...
...difficult to know which part of the 2 1/2 hours of recording to share, but here's a bit of what went on...
..dilemma - rough seas and whales miles from shore!
...many want to know who was there...well, with that situation it is impossible to tell who was present, but we do know that some J Pod whales were present, think some K Pod whales were present and know that some L Pod whales were present...from the calls, the K Pod 'kitten call' (S16) was quite dominant, J Pod was as well...and there were many times throughout with echolocation clicks...L Pod signature call (Up-tick) was not as dominant, but I did hear some L Pod calls that we don't hear all the time. Those echolocation clicks - foraging!
...fast forward to November 4, (because I am actually writing this on 11/4) the L54s showed up today coming down Waldron Island (thank you San Juan Safaris for that!)...which adds another piece to the puzzle...were they here on the 2nd or were they somewhere else on that day?! If they were here and they were part of the participants in that spectacular audio encounter, did the others go north as well? If they did it seems they were very quiet when they did...
So it's a mystery and might just remain that way...doesn't matter, we need to focus on the salmon for these whales and repairing this ecosystem too, so these whales will be able to survive.
...why are the whales here now?...well, it seems that chum salmon are still coming in...on November 1st there was a fishing seiner on the west side. I only saw the one and it was setting its net. There could have been more down island out of my view, but I don't know. I also learned from Simon of Ocean Ecoventures that there were fishing seiners up near Samsun Narrows, where evidently chum salmon are as well, why else might seiners be there...that might explain why J Pod went up Trincomali Channel on Oct 24th...it's has not been a 'normal' route for them...
...in addition, in the last few days the birds, bait fish, and seals have been quite active, and next in line should be salmon coming through, though they are not easy to spot...
...HOWEVER...the whales seemed to be doing lots of foraging...lots of echolocation clicks over the Lime Kiln hydrophones over that long, spectacular listening session...
...interested in banning open net pens in Washington State?...upper left column on this blog is a link to a petition...it's not my petition...but I signed and think it would be a good thing to allow the Salish Sea to be free of open net pens of farmed Atlantic salmon...just trying to help the author of the petition get those signatures to take to the State.
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