Busy and.....not so busy.

Hello,

It has been a strange July.

The whales have been in and out of the trans-boundry area over the last 2 weeks. All 3 pods took off and spent some time near Neah Bay last week and have apparently left again today.

We had a couple of close encounters at the lighthouse when they were here, including a nice double spyhop pictured above. It is J22 and her calf J38.

We also got this really great shot of a killer whale as it looked at Amanda. If you look closely you can see the animals iris!


We did have a minor mishap this day as well. The wind blew our video camera over, causing it crash against the sharp rocks. To make matters worse it even landed in a tide pool!
Goodbye camera. It is the first time we lost a piece of equipment to the elements in the field in over 7 years of work.

Talk to you again soon.

J

Good Morning,

It has been a busy and hot two days on San Juan Island. We watched on Tuesday as the Southern Resident community of killer whales swam by the lighthouse at Lime Kiln SP. The whales were broken into little groups, some way of shore, a few in close and one (L79 pictured above) went by about 10 yards from the rocks we were sitting on. Having been around these animals quiet for awhile, I kind of forgot how big some of them are. L79 was so close when he passed that his image filled the entire frame of my camera, even though I was zoomed out as low as I could go.




We were also listening to the hydrophone and the whales were so amazingly vocal that night.
In fact, you could distinguish each pod clearly as they went by. J Pod was at the front and their specific calls were heard first. Just as those calls began to fade, K's started to creep in. As K's slowly passed, you could begin to hear L Pod calls blending in as well.
You can listen live too...just go to http://www.orcasound.net/ and click on either the OVAL link or the one for The Lime Kiln SP hydrophone.

It was another magic night in this magic place.

Talk again soon.

Hello,

L Pod, well at least some of them, joined the J's yesterday afternoon in the waters off San Juan Island. For some of these whales it is their first time back since last year. They were mixing and mingling throughout the night and I was fortunate to catch up with them this morning. We got some great video and a handful of pictures, including this one of the J17 and her two daughters. It is the second time this summer that I got the whole subpod in one frame. I also got a nice photograph of the larger bull L57 babysitting, (or is it playing?) with the pec slapping J35.




Word also arrived that K Pod is coming in from Johnstone Strait, bringing some other L Pod whales with them.

Looks like the 4th of July will be a big whale holiday.

J