Friday July 9, 2010
Friday July 9th, 2010
We had the most fantastic day of whale watching this season! As we were travelling north towards Point Roberts, we had to do a fast turn around, because the whales were behind us and to the east! There were so many whales and they were so spread out in the large body of water called the Strait of Georgia, that while we were heading to a group spotted north, we passed a small group of Orcas to the east of us. We stopped and looked around and there were whales everywhere to the east and north spread out for miles. Two other mainland U.S. boats arrived and we were the only three boats on the scene. The whales had been heading south, but they changed their direction and started heading back up north. They were taking their time because there was a lot of ‘play’ happening. I don’t think we’ve seen this many breaches, cartwheels, somersaults, and all other types of acrobatics in a long time. Every time an Orca would breach, they would repeat this for three to seven times! There were several simultaneous breaches’ that were synchronized between two whales as if they had been rehearsing. We were with L pod, which has 42 members. We later heard that most of J pod were further north where the Canadian boats were. We were able to stay with the whales for a long time, because we didn’t have to go very far north. L22 (Spirit b. 1971) was one of the groups with her sons L79 (Skana b. 1989), his name means ‘supernatural power’ in the Haida language), L89 (Solstice b. 1993) and her little brother L87 (Onyx b. 1992). These are all adult males with 5 to 6 foot dorsal fins and weighing thousands of pounds. A male orca can get up to 13,000 pounds and 28 feet. Females are considerably smaller at 22 to 24 feet and 6,000 to 8,000 pounds. There was another group with L94 (Calypso b. 1995), her first calf born 2009, her big brother L41 (Mega b. 1977) and their sister L77 (Matia b. 1987). Matia had a calf earlier this year, but it has not been seen for awhile. If an orca is not seen with its pod, it is assumed dead, since they never leave the pod that they are born into, male or female. They stay with their mom and family their entire lives. We had to have seen almost a hundred breaches today. The whales were very active above the surface, which makes great whale watching for us. When we are watching, we usually only see 95% of their activity, because the rest is all underwater, but not today! Other wildlife we saw: harbor porpoise, harbor seals, eagles, and many birds (see previous reports).
