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No calls but orcas nearby
August 8 2022 Orcas: A50s, A54s, T069s, T099s Humpbacks: Ridge, Guardian, Stitch, Squiggle, ?Cutter, ?Quartz We can pick up directly where we left off, with the A50s in the Strait. Shortly after midnight, they began to cross over to Cracroft Point, and it wasn’t long before they came into Blackney Pass. We counted blows under a starry sky, complete with faint murmerings of the Northern Lights visible over Swanson Island. The A50s slowly continued west, dipping out of our range and plunging us into silence around 4am. They would be gone until midday. A report of Northern Residents heading west along the Vancouver Island shore by Naka Creek at 8:14am told us that the A54s were still close by. We did not hear them, and by 12pm they had turned again and were heading east past the Cliff. The team there took a lovely photograph which showed all 9 members. The day’s focus shifted to Bigg’s, with two groups keeping us busy for a good few hours. The T099s and T069s were criss-crossing each other in the Strait around 10:15am, visible from Cracroft Point, and sent at least 100 Pacific White-Sided Dolphins scattering into Blackney Pass. The T069s continued west up the Strait, passing Telegraph Cove at 12pm. Meanwhile, the T099s followed the dolphins into Blackney, visible from our deck at 11:42am. They remained here for over an hour, hunting around Parson Bay. There was lots of splashing and tail lobbing, as the other marine species in Blackney Pass were on high-alert. Rafts of Stellar Sea Lion swam close to shore, sticking their heads out of the water and grunting loudly. Porpoises and dolphins made a bee-line for Blackfish Sound. We saw eight individual humpacks in the pass at one point, and we couldn’t help but wonder if they were all here to fend off against the Bigg’s. The mysterious lives of these ocean beings will surely pose many more questions for centuries to come. By 2pm they were back in the Strait, and had a confirmed kill close to the Hanson Shore, visible from Cracroft Point. As this scene was unfolding out front of the lab, so the A50s were slowly making their way east in Blackfish Sound again, visible on our Flower Island camera around 2pm. It took them a while, fighting an ebbing current, but they entered our view at 4:42pm. Slowly, they made their way through, cutting close to the lab - presumably to avoid the full force of the current agains them - before turning the corner towards the Strait. It was a sight enjoyed by all. For the next couple of hours they foraged off Cracroft Point, steadily moving over to the Vancouver Island shore. A very welcome report from Scotty on that shore said that he could hear close calls from the A50s on his personal hydrophone, but other very faint calls at the same time. A-hah! We had terrible boat noise in the Strait so our ears were masked, but these faint calls were very likely the A54s coming west. Sure enough, just after 9:30pm, the calls grew closer to the entrance to Blackney Pass and the A50s and A54s came in to our range. The light had disappeared, but the vibrant calls and ‘pfoo’, ‘pfoo’, ‘pfoo’ of 15 blows were beautiful in the darkness. We heard some wonderful calls on the newly-installed Local Center hydrophone - a project of bioacoustician Herve Glotin who is visiting for a couple of weeks. The A50s and A54s, now reunited, headed off into Blackfish Sound once again, where this report ends. The day was brought to a close with assistants out on the lab deck, watching beautiful bioluminescence in the jet black waters.
Suzie, OL
09 Aug 2022 18:38:33 PDT |
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