EncDate:22/02/24 

EncSeq:2

Enc#:18

ObservBegin:02:56 PM

ObservEnd:03:16 PM

Vessel:KCB III

Staff:Dave Ellifrit, Michael Weiss, Katie Jones

Pods:Bigg's killer whales

LocationDescr:lower Strait of Georgia

Start Latitude:48 48.15

Start Longitude:123 01.81

End Latitude:48 48.38

End Longitude:123 03.22

 

EncSummary:

After leaving the T90s and T124A2s (encounter 17-1), we headed through Active Pass and then north in the Strait of Georgia towards a point north of the Fraser River delta to see if we could find the northern residents who had been reported. The water in the strait was pretty calm but the skies were a bit darker where we were going. The new boat got us to the south end of Bowen Island in less than an hour. The last report we had to go on was two hours old and put the whales heading east from a little north of where we were and heading east toward Bowen Island. We stopped at a spot where we could scan up the southeast side of Bowen and we also dropped the hydrophone. We didn’t see or hear anything and there was a big dark cloud with a rain squall up that way and over northwest Vancouver. We headed north to a spot where we could scan up the northwest side of Bowen and dropped the hydrophone a second time but, once again, didn’t see or hear anything. We did a loop between the little island archipelago off the west end of Bowen Island and Keats Island and stopped to scan again as far as we could see into Howe Sound. The whales had either headed deep into Howe Sound or had turned back northwest towards Sechelt. If we had brighter skies and a bit more of the afternoon left, we might have kept looking but we were a long way from home. We gave it a good try but decided we probably ought to start heading toward the fuel dock before it closed. We headed south past the Fraser outflow before angling towards East Point. It was a nice ride and the sun came out again by the time we had made it to the coal docks.  

We were approaching Boiling Reef when Michael spotted killer whales to the east of us. They were not too far from the green can buoy and our second encounter of the day started at 1456. The whales were the T99s and they were traveling slowly west in a tight group. They were acting pretty relaxed and we got some nice lefts on them in beautiful calm water. They did a little slow milling and we were able to get some nice rights on most of them too. We ended the encounter at 1516 with the T99s meandering slowly west towards Tumbo Island.

Photos taken under Federal Permits

NMFS PERMIT: 27038/DFO SARA 388