Wednesday, February 26, 2020

2-26-2020 J Pod and a Harbor Porpoise Encounter

Wednesday, 2-26-2020

J Pod came back in this morning...that wasn't expected...and what my pictures showed that I took from really far away wasn't what I had expected either!

J Pod calls began over the hydrophones.
As soon as I got to the shoreline I saw three harbor porpoise moving north past the lighthouse.  Moments later another group.
Not long after a couple sea lions appeared traveling the same path as the harbor porpoise - in close to shore, moving north.

That reminded me of 2005, April, before hydrophones were on-line.
It was late in the day and I was sitting on the rocks just enjoying the late afternoon, when along came a group of porpoise and soon behind them a few sea lions...and little did I know behind them was J Pod!

It didn't happen quite that way today, but there may have been a reason the harbor porpoise and the sea lions were moving away from the orcas.  It wasn't until later when I was looking at the few images I took today of the whales, when I noticed something was different about that group I was watching.  I was down island a mile or so, and this one group appeared to be resting, no maybe foraging, or just goofing around.

I had no idea until I looked at my images several hours later.  So here they are. I was really far away from the whales but you can clearly seen a harbor porpoise.  Looks like Tofi J-56 was in the mix too...maybe getting an education about harbor porpoise!  ha!




...the whales have a history of interactions with harbor porpoise...maybe the researchers, who soon arrived, got to see more than I did...

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