Seals, Ships, Marina Life, Cetaceans

Also fish, harbors, scenery and map fun. Two days on the good ship Kingfisher (actually that's her brand name, but my host and hostess have not agreed on a name for her) in perfect weather. We zipped across the Strait to Friday Harbor, first circling up the west side of San Juan Island and then east through Speiden Channel around the outside of Henry Island, in hopes of seeing orcas, as the Southern Residents were known to be have been in the neighborhood two days before. No orcas. We moored in Friday Harbor Marina at slip H29 (G and H are the guest moorages).

Friday Harbor, San Juan Island, September 17, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

The good ship Kingfisher (Click for larger image.)

JL and I walked up into town, first to the Whale Museum, then a sidetrip to locate my motel, then souvenir hunting (scored two very nice bookmarks from the bookstore with, yes, orcas on them), then ice cream sitting on a bench overlooking the ferry dock. Ice cream is an obligatory part of being in the Marina. But it was end-of-season, only about a third of the zillions of flavors were available, and one person doing the scooping-up.

Ferry-watching, September 17, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

Also we bought some frozen baitfish to feed to Popeye the harbor seal, who lives in the marina. He was lurking right there by the fish shop on the dock, the better to encourage people to buy him eats.

Feeding Popeye (Click for larger image.)

I've never hung out in a marina before. It is very intimate. When we were cooking our dinner on the stern rail, so were the people in the next boat. Foot traffic constant to and fro, people returning with shopping bags. Before dinner we went back to the store to walk the dog and buy olive oil, which JL had forgotten to pack. People wander up and down the docks examining each other's boats and their accoutrements. Popeye the seal came by. We fed him some of our own baitfish.

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In the morning we retraced our route around the island, except this time we went inside of Henry Island, past Roche Harbor and through Mosquito Channel. There were a bunch of seals hauled out on a small island. These looked to be our only wild marine mammals on this expedition (Popeye doesn't count), so the Captain stopped nearby for a photo opportunity. Once out in Haro Strait there was much shipping channel entertainment, bi-i-ig ships in the morning light. We slowed down for better photos now and again.

The Seals in Mosquito Channel. JL's pic. September 18, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

Big Ships, headed for Vancouver (Click for larger image.)

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We angled far to the west, passing close to Victoria. Our program for the day was to catch salmon in Marine Area 5 where the limit is higher and you can keep wild as well as hatchery salmon. When we arrived off Freshwater Bay, a few miles east of the area line, a circus of whalewatch boats were busily surrounding what seemed like A Great Many transient orcas (now called Bigg's Killer Whales, but even the scientists are having trouble remembering), who were hustling on eastward.

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It was a perfectly gorgeous orca sighting, silhouetted against the Olympics and darn near in our own front yard. According to the Center for Whale Research, "We had 21 transients in the Strait of Juan de Fuca! They were members of T60's, T100's, T137's, T99's, T36's, T37, T37A1, and T2B." Jeanne Hyde blogged the encounter from the point of view of the whale-watch boats, and with great visuals. First Mate JL's visuals also pretty great:

JL's transient orcas (Click for larger image.)

We lingered a while heading eastward with the crowd of boats and whales, then continued west until we were across the Marine Area 5 line. Then we fished. The boat seemed happy to be doing its proper job.

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We caught two coho (silver) salmon right away. First Mate JL kept up the log on the back of the fishing license. Then we had a series of misfires, nibbles and catching tiny little fishes. I took a turn driving the boat. Captain JL asked me to please steer us out of the nursery and back into the bigger fish. I was more concerned to stay in our lane, and not run into any passing big ships. But in fact then we caught our two more fish. "We're done," said the captain, and we headed back to Port Angeles.

Host and hostess, JL & JL. September 17, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

Thank you to JL & JL for an adventure that in multiple ways greatly expanded my map.

Awfully Far Away At the Moment

Wandering the web, thinking about there even though I'm in Florida, nearabout as far away as I can be. With the help of Mike Sato's SalishSea News and Weather, and twitter, and the PDN and the dam webcams, I may be 3500 miles away, but my head is still immersed in stories of home.

The arrival of a derelict fishing boat off the Queen Charlotte Islands means NOAA has had to begin changing its tsunami debris models, though they apparently still never acknowlege that Ebbesmeyer and Ingraham have been saying the same thing for six months. Seattle Times has a wonderful story about the Puget Sound pilots who work out of the pilot station at Port Angeles harbor, and another great story about revegetation work in the lake bottoms exposed by the deconstructn of the dams on the Elwha. The dead killer whale L112 died of an explosion. This is going to be a huge ongoing story, and will affect how my friends at the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary can do their work.

It's been raining all week up home, and we are good for snow in the mountains (1) (2). Other places I care about doing not nearly so well for precip and water-storage in the mountains, but it's dang hard to blog via the iPad. Will stop here...

First Beach Web Cam

Why am I here and not there? (Love me them web cams...)

First Beach Web Cam, 7:20 AM, March 6, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

Other glimpses of the world out there, brought to us in our desk chairs by the magic of the Web: For PG, you're right about the snowpack in the Sangre de Cristos:

SNOTEL Map (River Basin Snow Water Content), March 5, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

Yesterday there were orcas in Port Angeles harbor again, which of course I didn't see. Didn't go out to First Beach to try to see gray whales, either. (Well ok, I had something to do and I got it done despite feeling crummy. But...) Falling down on my annual job of not-seeing whales from First Beach, need more discipline. They're coming, they're coming (1)(2). I need to be out there on the point in La Push, not seeing them.

By golly look at that. It snowed last night at only 500-whatever-feet when it rained here in town and was going plinky plinky on the drainpipes.

Glines Canyon Dam Cam, 7:32 AM, March 6, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

They're going to have to move the Lake Mills Delta Cam soon, the lake is drawn down so far you can barely see water... Hey, National Park information person, please update the Dam Removal Blog. The last entry was so-o-o-o good. #kthxbai

Road Day Up, Boat Day, Road Day Back

Friday trekked across the Strait on the ferry, and drove all the way up island to Port McNeill to rendezvous with friends. Saturday we spent on the Naiad. These are the A30s. We were with them most of the day. It rained.

A30s somewhere in the Plumper Islands, I think. (Click for larger image.) A30s off Cracroft Point, OrcaLab's observation station in the background (Click for larger image.)By this point in the day I had lost track of where we were. Someplace beautiful and rainy, no? (Click for larger image.)

Word is, a large group of orca are headed in from the west. Everybody will be back on the boat today, but I have to head home. Before the next time I do this trip, I'm going to have learned a lot more about Vancouver Island geography and geology, to keep myself entertained for the six hours on the road. Aiming for the mid-afternoon ferry. Yikes, gotta go.

Third Boat Day

Thursday morning we went to Telegraph Cove to rendezvous with our water taxi. He had had a fishing charter at 5AM, so we weren't going out until 11AM or so. Nice slow morning. We zipped on over to OrcaLab on Hanson Island in heavy fog. It took some doing to get into the boat in Telegraph Cove (very low dock), and out of it at Hanson Island (no dock at all). We had a lovely time: visiting with Grandmother Cedar, sitting in the house talking about orcas (one of our transients the day before would have been T19b, he has a tilted dorsal, oh yes he did, that was him), meeting the volunteers, looking at Blackfish Sound out their wonderful windows, hearing all the news, having tea and cookies. Paul Spong himself gave us the lab 'here's what we do' tour, a treat for the two newbies in our party.

Getting back on the boat was yet more of a challenge, E. who is even shorter than I am sensibly just crawled under the rail instead of trying to step up onto the boat and then climb over it. We returned around the back way, so we got to thread our way through Weynton Passage and admire all the narrow openings and mysterious passages among the Plumper Islands, just about the best there is for scenery. Then our captain ran out of gas. He puttered ever so slowly a little bit further to a place where it was safe to be without power for a while, then shut down and telephoned for someone to come across from the fuel dock in Telegraph Cove. There we sat for about 45 happy minutes, bobbing around just short of where Weynton Passage enters Johnstone Strait. Conditions were perfect, it was warm and flat, slack current, we were perfectly safe, it's one of my favorite spots in the world, looking through the mysterious spaces among the islands,

and we had a mini-wildlife tour just sitting there. Some dolphins, a seal on a rock, a minke whale came very close by and then went on his/her way; and a herring ball also nearby, with gulls and ducks and three eagles working the feast. We five loved it, just quietly being in one of the more entertaining and productive intersections in the world of water. It's an orca thruway when they are around, which of course they were not; a very biologically rich spot and we couldn't have had a better place to be dead in the water. :-) (Some photos of the Plumper Islands in this post from three years ago.)

A little boat called Knot Again brought us fuel, and followed us in. (All this took place on this map:)

(Click for readable image.)

Friday, driving down the island, saw a bear. He walked across the road, casually showing off: 'this is what a bear looks like in profile, don't I do it well?' I wished for a dashboard camera.

PS Transient orcas are what we saw this week, and mostly they just have numbers, haven't been named. The Northern Resident orcas have names, and to the people who try to observe them in their core habitat every summer, they also have families, histories. Read a little about it in Paul Spong's blog. Personally I've always identified with Scimitar, A12, who is even older than me and still earning her living in the ocean.

Some stray images, and yes, I probably should have pitched the camera into Goletas Channel in the middle of the second day.

Tuesday. The bear on the shore at Hidden Cove. (Click for larger image.)Tuesday. Dolphins. (Click for larger image.)Wednesday. Somewhere west, vicinity of Goletas Channel. Very smoky air. (Click for larger image.)Wednesday. The curved dorsal fin. (Click for larger image.)Thursday. Waving goodbye at OrcaLab. (Click for larger image.)

North Island Waters

Port McNeill, northern Vancouver Island. Here to rendezvous with some of the long-time supporters of OrcaLab and denizens of the Orca-Live community website.

Luckily actually seeing orcas is not the whole purpose of the exercise, because they are mysteriously absent. Tuesday we were out with the MacKays on the Naiad Explorer. Well we had no orcas, not a hint of one and nobody knew where they were. The big events of Naiad's day were: a black bear on the shore, 100 or more pacifc whitesided dolphins dancing with the boat (if Bill stopped, they slowed down and paraded away, if he started up again, SHOWTIME!!!) We went way west, to look at the sea lion rookery in the Millar Group, drifted among many islands, put the hydrophone out in many places (no calls), and at the end of the day had a minke whale and a friendly grey whale. It circled the boat, it stared at us, it was such an amazing sight that I forgot to take pictures. Later that evening, OrcaLab reported "Bill Mackay thinks the residents may have spent part of the day near Blunden Harbour/Browning Island foraging amongst scores of jumping salmon. Bill was relaying a report he got when he arrived back at the dock."

Wednesday again on the Naiad. We headed west right away, and eventually heard a report of a small group of transient orcas ahead. These are the mammal-eating, far-ranging orcas, not the fish-eating residents who (used to) spend each summer in these local waters, and whose names, family histories, and calls are very familiar to OLers. We found the transients in Goletas Channel, and paralleled them heading west for a long time. Ellen said they were "T18, a sprouter male, a young adult and another female."

Then we (barely) saw some Dall's porpoises out in Queen Charlotte Strait, and they skittered right away. On to visit the sea lion rookery. Then headed back, seeing two humpbacks along the way. Nice synchronized performance from the humpbacks. No resident orcas. Late in the day Bill heard that they were seen rounding Cape Scott, outbound.

Today we go by water taxi to pay a visit to OrcaLab itself, tucked on the back side of Hansen Island..

I seriously considered pitching the camera into the ocean yesterday. All the images are flat and grayish. Well, so is the air, as we are under heavy smoke from huge forest fires in interior British Columbia. Everyone else was getting good images. But I kept doing the wrong thing, or forgetting entirely to try. Nevertheless I saw what I saw, the humpbacks huge and graceful, flukes up as they dove; the T18s momentarily close enough to the boat that saddle patches, eye spots and details of the dorsal fins were plainly visible; the whitesided dolphins racing with the boat, spread out across the surface of the Strait.

T18s in Goletas Channel; SeaLion Rookery on islets in the Millar Group, Queen Charlotte Strait. (Click for larger image.)

Feet on the Ground

On Thursday was out at La Push on the Quileute Reservation, for their welcome-the-whales ceremony. The gray whales who are often at First Beach in this season were much in evidence, very active and hung around for an hour or so. The last bit of the ceremony was a food offering, two teenage boys carried a raft covered with cedar boughs with a salmon on it out through the surf and launched it into the ocean. Right then some orcas appeared, very close inshore. Unusual for this place, they don't come inshore anywhere out there on the outer coast but they did. Looked like transients. Perhaps that means the last part of the gray whale migration, the mothers and babies, has reached this part of the coast, and the transients were hoping for a baby gray dinner. But they apparently don't usually do it at First Beach, and in the midst of all the drumming and chanting and the absolutely astonishing regalia of the ceremony participants, a more magical explanation works just as well.

So finally I have done it, stood on the shore and seen not one but two kinds of cetacea at the same time.

And if I leave out the parts that are not mine to show or tell — understanding that the participants' regalia are as individually recognizable as their faces, and their history is their own — that's all there is to say about it.

Orca at First Beach (Click for larger image.)

Whoo Hoo: Orcas in the Harbor

According to Orcanetwork, "There were 5 transients that went into Port Angles Harbour on the afternoon of the 9th. They were T41, T41A, T44, T109A and T109A2." According the the news article they appeared around 2 PM. So I was at work, and then at the laundromat, while I was missing my chance to see orcas from shore Right Here.

(My colleague J.R. told us on Friday morning that Thursday afternoon he and his wife had seen orcas from the tribe's beach at Angeles Point.)

A38, Blackney

Very nice day on the water. Much of the day the fog lifted up the hillsides so you could see the scenery. (Yesterday was very flat; you could see the water, and animals on the water, but usually could have no idea where we were unless you darted down below and looked at the electronic chart displaying a little marker and line of travel at the boat's position. Hooray for electronics.)

We found the A30s pod of orcas, waited for them just outside the ecological reserve. There was a little bit of hydrophone action: the A30s were briefly vocal and we got to hear them, while the Naiad bobbed around and the pod slowly came toward us. (I do love the sounds best, even when the sights are coming in through my eyes). There was more than a little showing off on the part of Blackney and Pointer, people with the skills to aim their cameras and push the buttons at the right moments got good pictures.

Then 18 of us were dropped off at OrcaLab for a visit and tea, Paul & Helena very welcoming and golly what a beautiful spot. On the return run, a brief visitation from some Dall's porpoises, which my new book calls 'exuberant cetaceans'; ooh truer words never written: they zipped, they bounced, they turned over and flashed their markings, they jumped, they vanished, justlikethat. Then we came back in via Weynton Passage, gazing through all those narrow waters and openings among the Plumper Islands, which as scenery goes might be my most favorite up here. Unutterably beautiful.

Blackney in Johnstone Strait

Weynton Passage

Soundtrack

Orca-Live has audio again this year. It's mostly on whenever I'm home, even if the whales aren't around. You just never know when they might start calling within reach of the network of hydrophones. I keep one eye on the community page for OrcaLab updates about which pods are where, and to exchange remarks now and again with the other listeners.

Sometimes there's boat noise, alas. Johnstone Strait is a major transportation passage. The link OL gives for the audio runs in Windows Media Player. If you have trouble with that one, you can also use this RealPlayer link. Dunno what Mac people do, but they're used to taking care of themselves...

Resting Group, off Malcolm Island, August 2006

Going up there in a couple of weeks. The ability to just roll onto the ferry and head up Vancouver Island is another part of why I'm here. It's simply no longer too hard to get to the ocean.