7-22-19 SRKWs - Catching Up from 7-6 to 7-22

July 6 - July 21
...during the night of July 5, J Pod, Onyx L-87, and K Pod went north...someone took some early morning footage of the whales in Active Pass...it was beautiful and peaceful...
...it was about five hours later when the whales were approaching East Pt...a location in the Strait of Georgia that leads into Boundary Pass that the whales often take when they come back down to the west side of San Juan Island...
...not continuing north to the Fraser River area was an indicator of how much salmon was NOT in the Strait of Georgia in the areas they often forage.  However, they might have spent a short time foraging or searching for salmon in the Strait of Georgia...
...as the whales came down and approached Lime Kiln lighthouse in the afternoon, they seemed to be in a 'hurry'...maybe to get back to the same area off San Juan Island where they had spent the the prior day.  They did.  They were spread out and foraging...watching them from a great distance until almost dark, I could still see a good amount of breaching, tail slaps, spyhops and more...so their energy appeared to be remaining high...
...having watched them for the last 15+ years from the abundant salmon years to the sparse years, there are clear differences in their behaviors when there is and abundance of salmon and when there is not...

...the whales did not come all the way back up island, but instead it was believed they were heading back out to sea, which was later confirmed...
...over the next two weeks...it turned into a time of seeing a lot of 'little things'...

...once in a while a 'big thing' might show up...

...but when those big things are not there, you start to see those 'little things'...

...sometimes an opportunity comes to you...

...sometimes you have to wait for it...
...while on my way back to town I learned of whales coming north in San Juan Channel...

...I had heard about and seen many images of this 'little white whale'... these are a couple of the first images I've gotten...it was amazing to see T046B1B under the surface...and so close to shore in San Juan Channel...

...the Southern Residents have not yet returned to the inland waters...

...when people ask why aren't the whales here...I sometimes reply with:
  I think the whales are telling us:
"We know you humans have a lot of things you are working on to fix, so we're just going to leave you alone so you can focus on fixing things and get it all worked out.  When you get your act together, we'll be back."

The question remains:

Will the humans work together to restore the ecosystem, which includes restoring wild chinook salmon stocks, cleaning up these toxic waters and prevent new/foreign toxic substances into the waters of the Salish Sea?  That's just for starters.