EncDate:28/04/24 

EncSeq:1

Enc#:41

ObservBegin:11:20 AM

ObservEnd:12:35 PM

Vessel:KCB III

Staff:Dave Ellifrit, Michael Weiss

Pods:Bigg's killer whales

LocationDescr:lower Gulf Islands

Start Latitude:48 31.22

Start Longitude:123 11.70

End Latitude:48 32.81

End Longitude:123 14.63

 

EncSummary:

After hearing reports of an interesting group of Bigg’s killer whales coming up Haro Strait from the south end of San Juan Island, Michael and Dave met at Snug Harbor and left in KCB3 at 1103. The group was reported to include the T146s along with T125A and T128. The T146s are a group that does not show up in the area very often so we were eager to see them. T125A and T128 are a pair of probable brothers who were also rare in the area prior to 2015. Since then, however, they have become quite common visitors in the Spring. Other whales were thought to be present too. The water that day was not very nice and the sky was mostly gray but at least it wasn’t raining as we headed out. 

We arrived on scene about mid-strait off of Lime Kiln at 1120. The whales were in a single loose group as they headed north up Haro Strait. T125A and T128 were obvious, as well as a large sprouter and an adult female that we took to be members of the T146s. The sprouter had a slighter smaller sprouter traveling near him. After a couple of looks we were able identify the smaller sprouter as T65B1 and his mother T65B was there too. With the T65Bs here, it made for a group of ten whales. We were able to get good left and right side passes on them although the conditions were challenging and it was easy to bounce the whales out of the camera frame. Around 1130, another group of whales was spotted almost a mile to the northwest. They were heading southeast when first seen. A few minutes later, we decided to go over and see if we could get a few pictures of them. We headed toward the new group which had been reported to be the T49As along with T19 and T19B. The group we had been with also angled that direction. By the time we got to the T19s and T49As (minus T49A1 and A2), they were charging north about a third of a mile ahead of the other group. The whales were in a fairly sloppy section of water and we only managed to get photos on a few of them before they went down on a long dive. We moved a little ahead to wait for the lead group in a calmer bit of water but they never materialized. The trailing, original group came up again on a line heading directly toward Kelp Reef. When the T19s and T49As finally reappeared, they had turned around and shown up almost a mile to the southwest of us in much sloppier seas. It was not worth bouncing back that direction for a group of whales we had had several times already this Spring so we went back to the original group of the T65Bs, T146s, T125A, and T128. We were able to get some more right sides but we were being slopped around in the trough with both spray and whale blow covering our camera lenses. At about 1215, the whales turned westerly right through all the rocks just south of the Kelp Reef marker. We got a few more lefts but the whales were moving quickly towards washing machine type water so we ended the encounter there at 1225.