Tuesday, October 29th
...Monday ended with plans to get certain things done on Tuesday...
...oh, well...
...interrupted by some whales !!
...it was only 24 minutes into the day...you know, like in the middle of the night, when something woke me up!
...below are some of the vocals as shown on a spectrogram, which shows the structure of the vocalization...
...I haven't heard that many humpbacks but I more look for the vocal to be on the low section on the sprectrogram (lower tone),
...so when I saw some that were quite high and looking somewhat similar to Southern Residents...hmmm
...well, I began to wonder...where there two species of whales I was hearing?
...after listening and re-listening to the recording, etc. I decided on humpbacks...
~~~
...little did I know I'd be listening to some more unusual sounds, midway through the day...from other whales - the Southern Residents !! - Yes !! ...they came back down from the north today and came past the park and down Haro Strait...
...I imagine they'll be in Puget Sound or headed west in the morning...
...but since they like to 'make a liar' out of me...just maybe they'll be on the west side - ha! ha!
Friday and Saturday, November 17th and 18th
Friday:
...when I was awakened at about 3:00 a.m. to a humpback making sounds over the Lime Kiln hydrophones, the sounds were intermittent, and it didn't sound like practicing a song...but the humpback just kept on, every so often, I was awake now...
...good thing...because all of a sudden there were J Pod calls...though very faint...I didn't hear any K or L Pod calls at this point.
...I was awake now...
...by about 5 a.m. the calls had ended...
...there had been J Pod calls, some K and some L Pod calls...
...direction?...no way of knowing...
...later in the day I reviewed the recording from last night(11/16)...and I was so surprised to find that there were calls at (general time):
- 10pm - a few
- 11pm - midnight - several over the hour
- midnight to 1 a.m. - almost the entire hour!
...then no calls until about 2:50 a.m.
...that's when the humpback came on the scene.
...and somewhere in it all, what sounded like a barking California sea lion.
It was a very busy night!
Saturday
...8:00 a.m. I hear one high-speed burst of what may have been echolocation clicks, lasting no more that a second...
...once again - hit the record button and bolt out the door, this time remembering to take my cell phone with me...
...I get to Lime Kiln lighthouse and for some reason, instead of my usual of looking south first, I looked north - Oh, my! I see blows!
...then I see three killer whales miles and miles away...
...listening to the hydrophones I hear nothing...
...the next three hours I watch as these totally silent whales make their way down Haro Strait...I couldn't tell how many but way more than the three I had originally seen...
...no vocals, no echolocation clicks...they didn't look to be in a resting pattern as they were spread out, traveling in small groups...
...I know better than to try to ID off of 'killer whale dot' images on my camera...but I looked and at one point one looked like T2C2 because of the shape of his dorsal fin from his scoliosis of the spine...but when I got the image on the computer at home it wasn't even close...looked more like another was surfacing at the same time was all..
...then when Mark Malleson saw the killer whales he let me know there were a lot more than I thought...so I looked at my camera images again...and there - an open saddle patch!
...the Residents had come down island for over three hours completely silent over the Lime Kiln hydrophones! I had recorded the entire time and was listening as well during those hours, and nothing. This evening I went back and listened to the three hours and nothing! Silence!
You
may need some really strong glasses to even see the whales in these
images! I know I needed some really strong binos just to see them.
...hope you enjoyed your journey down Haro Strait with the whales today :)
...I went along the road and pulled off...a few minutes later Capt. Jim pulls up and we chat...as he is leaving he said he had room on the boat if I wanted. "I'll be there!"
...gee, maybe I'd get to see who really was out there today!
Adding a footnote: While watching the whales coming down Haro, there was a person standing nearby who received a text message that said: whales were seen between Cattle Pass and Eagle Cove and they were seen from a float plane.
That might have been the K Pod whales who were way south the day before.
There were plenty of whales that came down Haro but not enough to equate to J Pod, the L54s, and K Pod - which would have been over 45 whales.
Sunday, November 6th
...after an evening (Nov 5th) of many hours of humpback whales heard over the Lime Kiln hydrophones...here's a clip...
....I then wondered if any would be around this morning...A friend was visiting and as I was putting my socks on I hear, "HUMPBACK WHALE!" (HB - #1) - yes! being yelled out!
...out the door and down island to Land Bank instead of starting Lime Kiln Pt. State Park like usual...
...get out of the car and even before getting out the binos - "humpback!"
...that was HB - # 2 ...coming up island, so off to the park we went...
...we were looking for HB- #1 (coming down from the north) and HB - #2 (coming up from Land Bank)...and instead my friend sees HB - #3 and #4 !!
...there's another out by Beaumont Shoals area!
...it was taking very long dives and so back to active #3 and # 4...
...another one - who???...surfaces off Discovery Island while HB #2 was being watched by my friend and #3 and #4 were off of Chathan Island going down...
None were close and they were difficult to keep track of...but no matter, it is always fascinating to see whales...
I added this map to give you an idea as to actually where they were in Haro Strait.
This is a continuation of the previous post from October 21 and the humpback whales vocalizing throughout the night...
The previous post had a recording from the middle of the night.
This post has a recording from about 5:30 in the morning and it sounds quite different from the other recording...
...thought it interesting...
Monday, November 17th
...at about 2 a.m. Transient calls on the Lime Kiln hydrophones...only for a few minutes and very distant...
...two nights ago at about 11pm I heard K pod calls...not sure about Ls or Js...but I didn't know a direction...so when I heard, via the grapevine, that Simon of Ocean Ecoventures got word that lots of whales had exited Active Pass going north yesterday morning (11/16)...well, that must have been them...but it was still a mystery as to who and where...
...then at 8:45 a.m. this morning (11/17), I'm talking to Ivan of the Western Prince who is telling me that Traci saw Residents at Turn Pt. and they were heading down...oh, goodie..."wait, I hear calls right now, but they are faint!"...so some were coming from the north...but were there others to the south?...throw on the winter clothes, watch the icy roads and get to the park to go find out...
...all I did was wait and wait but no whales in sight...then my phone rang and I was soon on the Center for Whale Research boat, Chimo, with Dave Ellifrit...we knew that whales were spread out...but that far?!
...one here, one there...they would surface once and be gone...who was present?...
...the first whale we saw was Onyx L-87 - ATTENTION PLEASE! - he is the one who travels with J pod and mainly Group A of J pod...so we started to look for the J pod whales...nope...not over there, or over there...
...by the end of the time with the whales we knew that we had not seen any J pod whales and at that time we didn't know of anyone else who had either...later I learned that both Traci and Monika had gotten a picture of Granny J-2! what?...wild!...she and Onyx L-87...no other J pod whales were seen at all by anyone! - I think!
...click here for the Encounter page on the Center for Whale Research site for the write up by Dave and some of our pictures from the encounter...this encounter may not be posted just yet, but you can check CWR's encounter page... (11/18) Tuesday, 3 a.m. J pod calls loud and clear on Orca Sound hydrophones....
they were there for a while and then stopped...
...after re-listening to the recording I heard faint J pod calls behind some loud ship noise...
...then at 4:10 a.m. they started up again on the Orca Sound hydrophones again...
...and they had an accompaniment - a humpback whale!!!
...two hours later there was a strange sound...a barking California sea lion! - barking under the surface...
both were over the Orca Sound hydrophones...that was at about 6 a.m.
...it's pretty wild out there...
...I spotted the humpback whale from shore at about 8 a.m.
...at about 10 a.m. five California sea lions swam by in front of my place...
...but no killer whales did I see today!
11-06-14
00:23 a.m.
Now these are totally different humpback sounds from what I have heard before.
Those are two clips extracted from a total of close to 20 minutes.
Saturday, November 1st
Just listen to this...too cool...
It's all explained on the video.
...hope you enjoyed that as much as I did when I was awakened at 3:30 in the morning to all this!
note added: Ken Balcomb, head of the Center for Whale Research, let me know that this is incipient song. Thanks Ken!
...here's hoping we get to hear that song develop some more :)
Thursday, October 30th
...at about 1:20 a.m. transient calls came over the Lime Kiln hydrophones for at least 20 minutes...then an hour+ later I heard them again, only much more faint...
...10:30 a.m. I went to scan for humpbacks, since yesterday every time I looked out the window I saw one!
...right off the bat from County Park there were two way out by Kelp Reef marker...and then one much closer in at County Park...who later turned into two!
...so 4 humpbacks on a rainy and windy day...
...down to Lime Kiln to watch a helicopter do something near the lighthouse to do with acoustical work...very cool to watch that helicopter come down very close to the water and just hover...
...while watching the helicopter I also watched the humpbacks, who were several miles off shore, but I could see their blows and their tails when they sounded...too cool...
...and then tonight...a singing humpback on the Orca Sound hydrophones and this time I am sure it was singing...I compared it to the recording from last year and there are more similarities...but to be sure I sent a clip to the Center for Whale Research for verification...
...it started at about 9:40 pm for several minutes, then stopped and started again at 9:53 and this time he was really singing - in my little world anyway...
...here's a bit of what I heard...
...it's not the first time (see last year October 13, 2013)...and then last week when I thought it was singing...and now tonight...this may become common to hear at this time of year...
Sunday, October 26th (re-posted with corrections)
...in my excitement to record and share these sounds made by a humpback whale on 10-26-14, I neglected to go back to the recording from last year that was confirmed to be a singing humpback whale...
...when I heard these sounds, I had remembered them from last year's recording and jumped to the conclusion the humpback whale was singing.
...however, researchers from Alaska let me know that these sounds are related to feeding...
...going back and listening to last year's recording and comparing it to this year's recording, I can see the are some differences...
...here's the same clip I originally posted from 10-26-14 with different wording...
...with all the humpback activity within the Lime Kiln hydrophone range and not hearing any of these sounds except for this one time...oh, gee, it just gives me something else to wonder about!
added: go to blog post from 11-1-14 for more humpback sounds and this time it's the beginning of song.
