Saturday, February 18th
...J and K Pods went up two days ago...
...today some of them came back down...
...it got a bit intriguing: whales seen in two different places this morning - one group miles away going up and away...the other going down Haro Strait...(they had been spotted in Spieden Channel earlier)
...but who were they - Residents or Transients ???
...when they came into hydrophone range they were silent!...at least I couldn't hear anything in the way of orca...
...that is until a few began echolocating off Lime Kiln...of course by then they were there...
...only three within IDable range:
Princess Angeline - grandmother
Kiki - daughter
Star - granddaughter
...so surprised to see two Brant geese - it's the time of year for these geese to be moving north to Alaska...read more about them: http://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/brant
...Kiki is short for Kikisobleu, which was Princess Angeline's real name...
here's one link to read about Kikisobleu
...others were present but miles from shore...they were all heading toward the west...J Pod and Onyx L-87...
...now where is K Pod?...
Thursday, February 16th
...9:35 a.m. - faint Southern Resident calls...
...out the door...
...located one of them!...several miles from shore...then another...
...they appeared to be coming in from Discovery Island direction and heading across...
...the seas were lumpy and it was starting to rain...
...ran into Michael the Orca airplane fella who now lives in the middle east...he was surprised to see whales and glad they were here so his friend from Japan could see them...
...funny thing to see 'Michael' because this post is mainly about Mike - the orca - J-26 that is...
...three whales were already past the lighthouse...
...then came Eclipse J-41 and Nova J-51, and another surfaced at a tough-to-ID angle...but it looked like Moby J-44...
...some whales were very far offshore...the only way I saw them was because of the splash from some surface action...
...the hydrophones 'told me' that the whales who were close were J Pod and that some of the distant whales were J and K pod whales...been a long while since we've heard K pod calls.
...then Mike J-26 shows up...close in...
...farther off were his sister, Alki J-36 and her offspring, Sonic J-52...
...Mike, Alki, and Sonic were the nearest and were moving up island at a steady but not fast pace...
...they pass the lighthouse and a few minutes later Mike surfaces near a kelp bed where he often forages and seemed to begin showing forage behavior...
...but a moment later he surfaces traveling at a fast pace, across Haro Strait in the other direction and toward Discovery Island...first thought was that he was after a salmon...but when he kept on going...and going...
...it was about 11:30 when I last saw him still traveling away at a fast pace...
...a long time later at about 12:55 the rest of the J16s came back down island and spent time foraging offshore (a good distance) from the lighthouse...
...Slick moved up island leaving Echo J-42 and Scarlet J-50 traveling together... a good distance behind them came Alki and Sonic back up island...
...offshore of them was Mike...it was now 1:15...
...no telling what he had been doing for the last 2 hours...maybe he found some salmon somewhere...
...they continued up island slowly...Dave from the Center for Whale Research told me he last saw Mike at about 5:15 between Kellett Bluff and Battleship Island...after what Mike did earlier who knows where the rest of the family was...
...all the others were far up ahead at Turn Pt...
...so the question is...will the J16s catch up with the rest of J Pod and K Pod or will they split off like they sometimes do...
...so here's what my camera said: images of some members of most of the family groups in J Pod - J44, J39, J16s, J41 and J51, and most of the family groups in K Pod - K33, K37, K25, K26...
...and here's another I found...also gives you an idea of how far from shore most of them were...I kept deliberating between Onyx L-87 and Sonata K-35...
Sunday, February 12th
...today the Town of Friday Harbor and The Whale Museum held a tribute to Granny J-2.
...knowing that many people who knew Granny but live far away would not be able to attend, and because of requests by some...I remade the slide show into a movie so I could put it on my blog.
There are a couple places where there is sound - right at the very beginning (but very faint) and in two more places...then, almost at the end there is a 2 minute video...
...since it is a slide show there is text with the slides...
Here is the link to Vimeo for the slide show
Normally I would say that I hope you enjoy it...but it's not really for enjoyment...but rather to reflect on a mother, a grandmother, a great grandmother, and a great-great grandmother who not only did we hold dearly but her family and friends did as well.
As with all death, families adjust and they continue on, they don't give up. Let us not give up on them.
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...
Thursday, February 2nd
...early afternoon and one strange sound...look out and "is that a blow in the distance?"
...way in the distance at first there was one...then another...and in a few minutes there were at least 4 or 5...and they were spread out...looked more like Resident spread than a Transient group spread...
...but the sounds over the hydrophones were not giving clear evidence of Ts or Rs...hum...
...I had called Dave of CWR and let him know...he was on his way...
...but those whales hadn't continued up island, so off I went to see if they had changed direction...
...south of Lime Kiln and from the road I could see several 1/2+ mile from shore ...more than just 4 or 5...
...I need to have a conversation with both the Ts and the Rs now..just because I got a long lens does not mean for them to be farther away!
...I went up to Lime Kiln...I pushed the button at the listening station and heard them vocalizing...it was definitely Transients...
...the whales were in no hurry to go anywhere...there were several little kids and they looked to be goofing around...
...the T101s were a bit ahead in their own group...
...at one point I noticed one male up ahead of everyone else and he just kept on going...the others didn't follow but kept on at a snail's pace in an up island direction...
...I snapped a couple pics of that male...little did I know I would be quite surprised when I looked at my pictures later...it was T77A and those few pics that I took were the only ones I got of him the entire 3+hours I followed these whales from shore...
...I kept thinking he would be coming back but that's because I thought he was someone else!...
...it took the others several hours to go about 3 miles...pretty sweet, even if they were quite a distance from shore...they were vocal just about the entire time both over Lime Kiln hydrophones and later over Orca Sound hydrophones...
...the challenging lighting actually helped today, and with the calm water any nicks or notches stood out nicely...
...there were several kids and there was a lot of tail fluke action and head stands like this...
...when they began to move slowly up island I went to County Park to wait for them...there was some interesting bird interaction with the young whales...they were in the distance as you can tell...
...it was now getting later in the day and facing more to the west...made for some interesting lighting...
...10 minutes later off to the southeast...no whales just a beautiful sky...
...so these 18 orcas were going up and likely toward Vancouver, Nanaimo or somewhere up there in the Strait of Georgia...or even farther north...and since these waters are part of where they roam, they'll be here again...just don't know when...
...and up there too, as far as I think we assume, is J Pod...will they show up tomorrow or maybe not for a while...or maybe they were coming down Rosario Strait today and no one saw them - it is still winter...
...February has already been a very busy killer whale sightings month and it's only the 2nd day...
...food for our thought...let's just hope that the Transients eat a lot of harbor seals because the harbor seals eat salmon...and we'd really like there to be more salmon for the orcas.
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?
