Welcome to another weekly breakdown of what we’ve seen out on tour for the week of May 5th – May 11th:
Bigg’s killer whales that we encountered on tours this past week include: the T46B1s with T46C2 (5), T100s (3), T123s (4), and the T137s (4) for a total of 16 individuals. This individual killer whale count is lower than the last several weeks, but we had multiple encounters with these family groups as they perused waters around the San Juan Islands and down in Saratoga Passage (the north end of Puget Sound, proper) for multiple days in a row.
We witnessed a very interesting (and frankly humorous) interaction between 20 year old female T137B and a bald eagle on Saturday’s afternoon tour. She was traveling roughly half a mile apart from her three family members of whom appeared to be in a resting pattern. After some quick lunging at the surface we were curious if she was attempting a predation. As we watched her continue to zig zag, we noted a seabird looking very much dead at the surface! It appeared as if T137B was playing a bit of cat and mouse, and then continued stalking this poor, lifeless seabird for a couple more surfacings. When T137B took her next dive, a bald eagle, seemingly from out of nowhere, flew over the last spot she was seen, dipped down to the water, and scooped up the dead seabird, taking off back to shore from there! It was definitely unexpected, to both those of us onboard and I’m sure to the confused killer whale who could not relocate the “toy” she was messing with!
This week, a “celebrity” Salish Sea humpback whale–BCY0324 Big Mama–was seen with some frequency, and Sunday’s tour got to make her acquaintance! Big Mama was one of the first humpbacks to come back into the Salish Sea and re-pioneer this area as a feeding ground, post commercial whaling. It’s largely in part to her bringing back calves to this area, along with potential other acquaintances or followers, that we’ve seen a phenomenal resurgence of humpbacks in these waters over the last 20 years. It’s always exciting when she makes her way back here in the late spring. We’ve been seeing more humpbacks showing up around the area and hope that means we’ll continue to have more individuals and more encounters with them in the future!
Gray whales have continued to keep a presence near Bellingham Bay, in Rosario Strait, off of NAS Whidbey, and throughout Saratoga waters. We encountered five or six separate individuals over this past week, only two of which we, personally, were able to ID through photos: CRC-2440 “Tahoma” and CRC-0056 “Stardust.” A couple of these whales were very low profile when they surfaced, and two whales we have photos for may or may not be cataloged as of yet (still waiting for some insight from Cascadia Research Collective to verify). It will be interesting to see how long they’ll stay until moving out of our area and continuing north for their summertime feeding. We hope they’re finding sufficient food while they’re making their Salish Sea “pit stop.” Some very nice tail fluke patterns on the gray we spent some time with up near Bellingham Bay (see photos below).
Another notable this past week was that some of our larger Steller sea lion haulouts are beginning to thin out a bit. The breeding adults will out migrate to coastal and offshore breeding rookeries, potentially leaving some of the juveniles behind. Things are certainly changing a bit as we begin to gear up for summer.
We’re looking forward to seeing what the next week brings us on the wildlife front!
