Aug 20th – The first true “Superpod” of the year where all matrilines were present in J, K and L pods. Excitement was in the air. We met up with some of the Residents as they headed towards the southern tip of San Juan Island from Hein Bank. Lots of playful behavior and breaches as the groups kept coming. Later in the day we even found the rogue whales rarely seen, the L54’s with L84 and L88 a few miles offshore of Pile Pt. Today was one of those days where you couldn’t ask for anything more, except more salmon to fill the bellies of our beloved SRKW’s!
Sleepy Sea Lions – check out the little tiny one
Mom and baby gull
Pelagic and Brandt’s Comorants and Heermann’s gulls on Whale Rocks
Mom and calf tail lobs
Some of the K14’s
J46 Star playing with her uncle J44 Moby who is a few months older than she is
J28 Polaris and her calf J54 (the youngest member of J pod) – Notice she is looking thin behind her blow hole. NOT GOOD! She has lost a substantial amount of weight and reported as emaciated (suffering from an illness and/or starvation) by the Center for Whale Research. Notice the sunken in area behind her blowhole… She has a 7 month old calf to feed.
I believe this was J31 who breached 2x
The J28’s with Mt Baker
J27 Blackberry with a backwards breach
J39 Mako doing a tail lob beside his brother J27 Blackberry
J27 Blackberry
J27 Blackberry “kelping”
J27 – a big whale doing a big tail lob
J27 exhaling before breaking the surface
L84 Nyssa, one of rogue whales we rarely see. Born 1990 lost all of his family, the L9 Matrilineal, and now travels with L54, Ino, (39 year old female) – adopted into her family.
L88 Wavewalker, another of the rogue whales we rarely see. L88 (born 1993) lost all of his family, the L2 matriline, and now travels with L54, Ino, (39 year old female) who lost her first born son at 13 years old. He was an uncle to L98 Luna.
K26 Lobo
K42 Kelp
Common Loons
Peace and tranquility – or just another boring spectacular purple sunset reflected on the mirror of the ocean