September 17 2021 A50s, A54, ?A106,?A118 A strong southeaster blew through the night. It had started the previous afternoon. Quite a lot of rain happened but not as much as predicted. All just a reminder that Fall is edging closer and that the more predictable weather of summer is probably behind us. But what of the whales? Through the night the humpbacks were quite low key. Starting and quickly ending efforts from midnight through 3am. No orcas called either. Finally at 5:17am a humpback in Blackfish produced a sustained contribution, even “singing’ beautifully between 5:19am and 5:31am. He was done by 6:01am. Maybe the same character, maybe someone different, began a shorter rendition a little later between 7:42am until 7:48am. The wind was still quite strong, showing not many signs of abating just yet but it was daylight and the day was ahead so always promising. Many gulls and other sea birds swirled around and above the shore just in front of the house and lab, a dramatic enough scene with the rolling waves. In the Strait waves crashed against the Vancouver Island shore as well. To our surprise we started hearing some A30 calls on the Kaizumi hydrophone at 12:30pm. The last we knew of the A30s was that they had been Blackfish Sound the day before. There had been no hint during the night of their movements. These calls started to get closer and they soon came in for a rub! The rub started at 12:35pm. There were multiple pass-bys on the underwater and surface cameras. We believe that some of the A50s and A54s were participating. We did not see Bend (A72), the A86s nor the A75s for example but we did identify A84 and possibly A54 herself. Ely had a second look at the footage just to make sure. The rub ended at 12:45pm as the whales carried on to the west. We started hearing distant A30 calls on Cracroft Point (CP) at 1:21pm and had a hunch that the same whales had circled across the Strait and were headed our way. We stopped hearing their chatter at 1:27pm on CP, but heard A30 calls again at 1:58pm on Parson Island! At 2:08pm, we saw orcas in the gap. They were on their way into Blackney Pass. At least 7 orcas entered together, but split up into three groupings with A72 a bit ahead, followed by a group of 2, followed by a 3rd group composed of A50, her baby, A84, and A99. As the residents moved through the Pass, many humpbacks appeared, one of them being Stitch and another Black Pearl. The orcas continued through Blackney Pass at a moderate speed and went out of sight by 2:35pm. We were able to follow them on the Flower Island camera for a bit, but lost them due to the bad weather conditions at 2:49pm. Faint calls were heard until 2:58pm. The wind finally calmed down and even the rain let up only to return later after dark. By then a humpback decided to rumble at 10:38pm as a precursor to his sounds that followed. We are looking forward to better seastates tomorrow although we understand the rain to suppose to carry on, and so shall we!  OrcaLab 18 Sep 2021 09:46:28 PDT