2-29-2020 J Pod Can Only Do This Once Every 4 Years

Saturday, February 29

...it was about 8a.m. when I decided to take a walk...luckily it was along the road on the westside of the island...
...and luckily I didn't get very far when I happened to see a blow in the distance - just one blow...hmmm...trees and the angle of the shoreline didn't give me much opportunity to see another, to figure out direction of travel...
...so at a 'quick-step' (ha-ha) I made it back to the lighthouse and Oh, My...here came a whale!
...once again just one whale...oh, but that one whale was important to me - It was Shachi J-19... 

...in the lead...why important?...because she became the replacement for Granny J-2 when Granny died in late 2016.  It still is not known if her leadership role is temporary or permanent and what if any changes may occur because of this...and what does temporary mean to the whales, anyway?

...I soon saw another and another coming up about 1/4 mile behind her and a bit more offshore...Eclipse J-41 and Nova J-51...
...then a few others...the whales were spread out...it was J Pod, of course...
...here came two males...Blackberry J-27 and who?

...it's Cookie J-38!

Behind them was Se-Yi-chn J-45...I remember when I first saw him - he was a brand new baby - the first newborn I had ever seen and that was back in 2009 and it was from shore at the park...

It took a while to locate others...there was a group offshore by more than a mile...
...the whales were moving at a steady pace, going up island...and then Blackberry and Cookie stopped and were actively foraging...

...they were farther to the north when the following echolocation clicks began...very loud...and then Alki J-36 surfaced...!
...can't be sure but it might have been her...

...the seas were choppy at first and eventually settled...the whales continued north...

So what is it they can only do once every four years?
The answer is:  travel in the Salish Sea on February 29.

2-19-2020 J Pod and K Pod Vocalizaiing over Lime Kiln hydrophones

February 19, 2020

Listen and read the text on the clip.
Then...
...just use one of your senses - close your eyes - to be totally focused on what you are hearing.

Special moments these are.

1-11-2020 Recent Lime Kiln Hydrophone Activity

January 6 and 7...things got quite interesting.

It wasn't orcas...

You just never know what might 'show up' on the hydrophones!

Audio of J Pod from an Early Morning in January

This clip is from early in the morning on January 11th.

Text on the screen describes what occurred.

Princess Angeline J-17 was a key participant in some of the sounds.

12-25-18 Christmas Whales

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, 2018

10-5-18 Most Stunning Echolocation Clicks

This is from July 26th of this year..
...a late day watching some of the Southern Residents as they struggled their way through the summer in their 'summer core habitat aka summer home area' where the fish are supposed to be plentiful...

...late on this day, a few whales came up island, pretty far offshore...Cappuccino K-21 was one of them...and Hy'Shqa J-37 and her boy, T'ilem I'nges J-49 were the others...what an unusual combination...there were a few others far offshore...none had gone very far up island from the lighthouse before they started to come back down...

...they were all on a food search...
T'ilem I'nges J-49 was close to shore and echolocating...with 'flair!

...Best I've ever heard...

...I knew I had the images and the audio, it just took this long to find the time to get it all together... 

5-27-18 Change Was In the Air This Morning

Sunday, May 27th
...open the door to hear gulls - yes, sea gulls - a sound that has been pretty much void around here for the last month...
...then I see 10 gulls...not much but when there have only been none, one, or two...well then 10 is alot...
...I heard a pileated wood pecker and it took a while to find where it was...

...still no word on the Residents...but it at least it gave me a bit of hope just hearing those gulls...
...there have been Transients and humpbacks in the area...yesterday the T65As came down San Juan Channel...

...and today the T100s and the T124As, who were in the area yesterday, surprised a lot of people by appearing along the west side of the island in two different groups about a half-hour apart and in-between the two groups were two humpbacks...

...then just a short while ago, at 8:22pm there were two Transient calls on the Lime Kiln hydrophones...was only quick enough to get one of the calls recorded but that was it...it's been a long time since hearing any killer whale calls over the hydrophones...glad for this one! Oh, then another at 9:15 pm...

...coming back down Haro Strait, or others that had been in Puget Sound, or even others that we had no clue were even in the area?...another mystery for another day.

5-25-18 In the Distance - Last Year

Friday, May 25th

Hoping to hear some of this in the not too distant future...
...in the meantime...

...after that acoustic encounter they were not heard from for three weeks.

...Saturday 5-26 is the Swiftsure Race (sailing race) in the Strait of Juan de Fuca...maybe someone will see the whales all the way out at Swiftsure Bank!

4-6-18 J Pod Heard But Not Seen

Friday, April 6th
It began with vocals over Lime Kiln hydrophones...

...last night I wondered if J Pod would come in ahead of this storm that is being predicted...I've noticed they have come in like that sometimes in the past, but don't have any idea if there is a relationship between those two...and here they were this morning...

...but J Pod was only heard and not seen today.

...there were Transients in several places - off the east side of San Juan Island, at the east end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and to the north near the Strait of Georgia...
...and there were 'mystery' whales off the lower west side of the island this morning...

...can't wait for J Pod to show up next...
...hope someone shows themselves tomorrow to reveal just who those 'mystery' whales were...
...and hope it all happens between the rain and wind storms that are on their way!

updated: turns out that the 'mystery whales' will likely remain a mystery...J Pod was seen the next day in Puget Sound...AND...so were Transients. 
...AND one of the Ts had a new calf...and one of the people who had seen whales early on the west side in the morning commented that there was a mom and a baby...so just maybe it was those Ts...but we won't ever know the answer to this one for sure.

11-16-17 J Pod Was Here Today !

Thursday, November 16th

...I had been thinking about when the whales showed up the day before and the day of Thanksgiving in 2013...and then I thought about how I almost had a scheduled today to dig into some archives with someone...

...well, glad it's not Thanksgiving yet...and glad the archive-digging didn't happen...
...I am now about convinced that J Pod reads my emails!

...at just before 8 a.m. I heard a call that made me think that J Pod was here...I bolt out the door and go to Lime Kiln where I have a good scanning view...the calls were not in close but they were clearly in Haro Strait and not terribly far away...
Oh, and the Park Rangers put up the Christmas wreaths on the lighthouse yesterday...so I took the opportunity...

...I continued down island and then up island and scanned for the next hour and a half...nothing...
...I get back home and play back the recording and there I find 3 calls, spread apart by several minutes: 8:35, 8:50, and 8:58 a.m. and that was it.  

...I continued listening and nothing...
...1:00pm Capt. Jim calls me to tell me that J Pod whales are coming down Haro Strait but are north of Sidney Island, some on the east side of Haro...and later I find that some are on the west side of Haro...
...that might explain who I heard in the morning and why the calls were so brief and spread...I certainly don't know the answer for sure...however, it might explain why the calls were so few and far between...the Lime Kiln hydrophones will pick up calls between some of the Canadian Gulf Islands...example...the first time documented is when I was at Lime Kiln and Simon was with Transients. They were behind some of those islands and when they crossed one of the passes, I think it's Hughes Pass, the Lime Kiln hydrophones would pick up their calls when they were in that opening, which was only for a few moments...
...so maybe J Pod was 'wandering' around in and among some of those places earlier in the day...
...I went to County Park to watch and wait...the whales stalled out at Kellett Bluff and looked to be spread across for three or more miles...they were foraging and not going anywhere...glad I was dressed warmly :)

...after about 1 1/2 hours a few began moving down island...they were not in close, but they were here and appeared to be eating...
...soon I went to Lime Kiln to watch them...still spread out all across the strait..
...I only saw a few, Slick J-16, Scarlet J-50 'catching up' again, Echo J-42 who was with Scarlet for a while, then she moved offshore...I also saw Shachi J-19...several males in the distance...could only make out Mike J-26...

...here's a sample of what they sounded like this afternoon...

...and the end of the day...well it was nice to see the whales...know they are under that beautiful sky...

...who knows where they will be tomorrow...
...we don't know for sure, unless someone up north has seen J Pod at least 8 days ago...I say 8 days because they can circumnavigate Vancouver Island in 10 days...and it has been 14 days since we last heard from J Pod...That was on the Lime Kiln hydrophones and it was thought they had gone north...
...maybe they were feasting on that strong chum salmon run, that was really good in many locations or maybe they had heard about the huge Chinook salmon that had made it to the Wonnack River, Canada...
...glad the mystery of 'where had J Pod gone' is solved enough to know they were here today!

10-30-17 Lime Kiln Hydrophone Happenings

Tuesday, October 30th


...ever since the first ever recording of a singing male humpback back in October 2013, there is at least one that is heard over either the Lime Kiln or the Orca Sound hydrophones in October and/or November...




October 29...2:08a.m. what sounded like a male singing humpback...first one of this season to be heard over the hydrophones...

 ...at about 5:45 a.m. it was singing again, but you could tell it was farther away...when it got to be daylight there were reports of five or so humpbacks south of the lighthouse...two of them came up island...and then not long after two came up island, in a bit closer, but we couldn't figure out if it was the same two, who had made a wide circle, or two others...
...J Pod was still up north and starting to come back down...
October 30...
...J Pod was reported to be out by Race Rocks...it appears they had come down from the north quietly in the night - one person did hear some faint whistles the night of the 29th...it likely was them coming down...and by mid-afternoon I learned the were facing east (inbound) but not going anywhere...
...so when at 10:20pm I heard one single J Pod call over the Lime Kiln hydrophones - wow! - maybe they are coming back in...

...that call was clear but faint...then over the next hour there were a few more, only two of which were clear...but that was it...too much ship noise...I figured the whales might be at the east end of Constance Bank, but that is just a guess...8 seconds of 3 faint calls - that's all!

...it's a wait and watch/listen for the whales...
AND
...it's a time for action to recover the wild stocks of salmon...

It is urgent that there be enough salmon for the SRKWs.  It is their ocean and their waters and the humans have done more destruction than stewardship of these waters. And it is now time for that to change by way of actions of restoration.   


 

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...

 

5-7-17 Audio of J Pod from Saturday Encounter at the Lighthouse

The previous post is about the pass by at the lighthouse last Saturday afternoon...

...it was pretty special since the whales had been here a lot in March, a couple days into April and then gone until May 7th...

...Hope you enjoy this...it was because of how the whales passed by that made it work so well and with what the last two did, well, that was just perfect - thank you very much whales!

3/18-19/17 Orcas - Where? Who?

Saturday/Sunday, March 18/19th

...so J Pod and Onyx L-87 had gone west...a day to work on firewood...
...just got finished at about 4:30...walking into the house...phone rings..."are you hearing Transient calls on the Lime Kiln hydrophones?"...
...I hit the record button...listened...waiting, waiting...then one call that sounded more like an S4, faint, but it would be J Pod if it was...bolted out the door and to Land Bank, thinking that if it was Ts then they wouldn't be close in and I might be able to see them better with the choppy seas...
...I went to Land Bank and with no hydrophone access, hearing ability was nil so where the heck do I look first - it's all white caps out there!
...I got lucky, I spotted blows just off the park, "oh, gee, the one time I don't go to the lighthouse and they are right in front of it!"...but I would later find out something that caused me to do some detective work the next day...

...David and Barbara arrived and David commented that there were a lot of echolocation clicks on the hydrophones - more likely Residents because Ts are not known to echolocate in that manner...David knows...
(note:  the hydrophones were moved last year causing changes in how close the whales might be when echolocating)
...the wind was blowing up island, so the blows were going that way too...but it took several minutes before they surfaced again...

...I saw the blows again (see the xx's on the above images) and this time a male's dorsal fin...David and Barbara went to Lime Kiln, I was right behind them and then decided to head to County Park to see if there were any other whales up ahead...
...Val and Leslie, who I had seen at Land Bank had moved on to County Park, not necessarily looking for the orcas but lucky for me Val spotted a blow far offshore...
...David and Barbara didn't show up at County Park so I wondered if they were seeing whales at Lime Kiln...(I learned later that no one had seen the whales. - correction on that - I learned even later than that, that they were seen by a few people as they passed by the park!)
...I watched these blows until they got closer, they were taking long dives...a small group coming up island, quite far off, a female with a juvenile and then an adult male...and since I had on my 'transients!' mind set, I was running through who it might be...
...I just took as many images as possible hoping I might get 'something' to ID later...

...okay, off to the next spot, a different view...

...back home listening to the hydrophones, this time Lime Kiln and Orca Sound there were clear J Pod calls a few times, distant calls that were difficult to even hear...and they sounded as if they were continuing up island...the last of the calls were heard off Lime Kiln hydrophones but only a couple and there is a location to the north where Lime Kiln will pick them up when Orca Sound doesn't...so the 'assumption brain' was still at work that they were going up...
...three pieces to this short clip from different times throughout the day...

...I had missed the first few minutes of people hearing calls and from what I did record I re-listened to the recording and found up two 'suspect' vocals that could have been Transients...on this recording is one from early on and then there was one, a bit different, from later in the day...but that was it...

...on to March 19th...'assumption brains' still going...a large group of whales spotted far offshore off the southern end of the island in the morning, well they just had to be Ts...right?
...going part way down island I was spotting to see if I could see them, when a small group - one adult male, a female and possibly one or two others, surfaced much closer than where Ivan of the Western Prince was watching that large group...these were others!
...I saw them in two surfacing sequences but too far off for any images and I didn't see them again.  An hour or so later one of the boats located whales even farther south and west - a small group of 3 and then they saw a large group about 2 miles to the south of the small group!  
...Wow! It was J Pod!...now I am wondering who was in that small group of 3...was it Slick, Mike, and Scarlet again?

...fun stuff...
...more importantly: did they come back in so quickly because they were following salmon in - assumption is yes...and did they then leave so quickly because there wasn't that much salmon that had come in?

 

3-12-17 Looking for Spring

Sunday, March 12th 

...a couple days ago, my attention was drawn to many gulls that were skimming the surface of the water...they were going after bait fish - that's a sign of Spring...
...so the next morning I thought I would go look for more signs of spring - like more birds skimming the surface or a bait ball or two...didn't find either of those but I did find 'someone' else who might have been looking for some signs too

...then the rain started and looking for signs of Spring could wait for another day...


...there were other ways to 'look for' signs of spring - the hydrophones!..and two of them occurred the next day (today)...

 ...so maybe Spring isn't too far away!

...and then the whales came back in this afternoon...right now it is 8:25 pm and there are/were very faint and intermittent echolocation clicks over the Orca Sound hydrophones...
...there were intermittent calls over Lime Kiln and some echolocation clicks about a half hour before but for now they have gone out of range over the Lime Kiln hydrophones...however the whales could show back up on them too...
...no telling where J Pod will be tomorrow morning...

...with all this going on...yeah, Spring isn't far away...

2-6-17 A Snow Day and Whale Day Too!

Monday, February 6th
...catching up on what J Pod has been doing...that large group of transients had gone up island on February 2nd (previous post)...
...J Pod came down the next day (Feb 3rd), down San Juan Channel at about dark...it was about 01:15 on February 4th that J Pod woke me up over the Lime Kiln hydrophones...but they weren't coming up they were heading west...
...on February 5th at about 11:00 pm I heard some extremely faint 'somethings' for a few minutes but could not determine what...
...so when I heard those same 'somethings' this morning (Feb 6th)...hum...it took a while longer and then (see if you can hear it right at the beginning of the audio...

...so it was J Pod and it was a day that basically hardly anyone went anywhere - A snow day on San Juan Island?  What?

...their vocals were quite interesting...they would fade off of the hydrophones, so you might assume they were coming up island (how we get into 'our' thought routine) but they were actually spread way out...
...some were vocalizing and echolocating near the Lime Kiln hydrophones and at times you could hear others in the distance vocalizing...
...thinking they were coming up I kept scanning, as little as I could see...and then I saw two coming up...and looking more saw one more up ahead...
...grab my stuff and walk gingerly up the road (no driving today so I didn't go too far) but visibility was actually a bit better...I waited and waited...nothing...
...just about ready to walk back and see if they were still coming up, a dog barks. "That dog hears the whales!"  And sure enough :)  about a mile offshore I got a glimpse.  Thank you doggie :)

...and a minute or so later I saw some whales coming down from the north of where I was...that's how I was able to determine such a spread...of course these, looked to be about 6 or 7, they had been on the Orca Sound hydrophones but that would not have determined how many or their direction...

...still far from shore...

...to have been stuck at home because of the snowy roads ended up being quite fun...hearing the whales was fabulous...so much echolocating and high speed clicks too...and a call that is unusual to me...I'm making a list of calls that I am hearing that I'm not accustomed to hearing...so far I have 2...
...don't know if there is any relationship to all the change that has occurred for these whales or not...
...well they kept on going down...
...was hoping someone would show up in the webcam...

...now that was fun...saw whales on a snowy day and didn't even get cold!

adding to all that:  yesterday and again this morning some burp (fish) sounds on the hydrophones and also today saw some Dall's porpoise and lots and lots of harbor porpoise foraging.  Might be that the whales followed some salmon, that were following some little fish that the harbor and Dall's porpoises were after.
...the food chain at work...

2-1-17 J Pod - Hydrophones - Last Night

February 1, 2017
...they woke me up at about 3:30 a.m. this morning...sweet...

...the whales were on the Lime Kiln hydrophones when I heard them...
...I was too sleepy to think to try the Orca Sound hydrophones, which are located a few miles north of Lime Kiln, to see if they were on those...
...my guess is that if they were still vocalizing, then they likely were...

...at the end of the clip I basically wrote something like this:
How do we feel joyful and celebrate the whales when we are aware of what trials they are facing?

1-28-17 Sounds From J Pod

Friday into Saturday, January 27, 28th

...it had been quiet in these waters since the last sighting of the J16s on January 9th...they had, however, been seen in the Strait of Juan de Fuca...
...late afternoon, and totally by chance, I saw a blow just south of Andrews Bay (County Park)...it was quite far but when I got my binoculars on it - it was a humpback!

...out on Peregrine with Capt. Jim and Jeff...it was a pretty day, the most calm water and sunny skies...no whales but nice to be out there...

 ...

 

12-25-16 Orca Vocal Encore on Christmas Morning

Sunday, early, early morning Christmas morning
so early it was only 1:25 a.m when they woke me up!

How very fortunate we are to be able to hear the whales even when we can't see them. 


So enjoy the sounds of some of J and K pods and Onyx L-87 too, in the wee hours of Christmas morning. 
They might not be loud as they sometimes are, but that's okay.  They give us the gift of their presence no matter what the volume might be.

You'll hear them again and each time will be special because it never occurs exactly the same. 
May those sounds carry you throughout the year.

Merry Christmas. 

12-24-16 Merry Christmas Eve From the Whales

Saturday, December 24th
...transient orcas were seen not too far distant and then they decided to come up the west side of San Juan Island...
...it was the T19s...I only saw T19, T19B and T19C...
...their blows were stunning to see...

...they were slowly moving up island...and just down from the park they dove and didn't surface until a good distance north of the lighthouse...and it looked like, from their behavior, they appeared to be after a harbor seal which gave the opportunity to get a couple different angles

...then up to County Park as they continued up island...

...home to listen to the Orca Sound hydrophones...and soon I heard them vocalizing as they continued north...those calls began at about 2:25pm and continued intermittently for about 20 minutes.
...then I heard them over the Lime Kiln hydrophones - very faint and brief...I figured they were on the far side of Haro Strait...there are a couple areas there that the Orca Sound hydrophones don't picks up calls but Lime Kiln will...
...then it was quiet of calls...

...now for the Merry Christmas Eve From the Whales...
...looking at the images of the Ts...with the hydrophones streaming in the background...didn't figure I would hear the Ts again...
...and then...and then..."Oh, my, it's Residents!"
...I don't know who else but I know I needed that today...I don't think they had been seen by anyone today, but here they were and they were on the Lime Kiln hydrophones for close to 2 hours...faint K Pod calls had started at 4:10 pm and then J pod calls soon started...they got a bit louder...so off I went in search of them, but there wasn't much daylight left...never did see them but when I got back home they were still vocalizing over the hydrophones.

Yes, Merry Christmas from the whales it was.