Some "Murre" of L-Pod

Okay, okay, really bad pun, but it does describe what I saw today! After a two day absence the Southern Residents made their way back in from the open ocean and on the Western Explorer this morning we met up with L-Pod heading out from Cattle Pass towards Hein Bank.

First of all, though, check out this beauty of a common murre that was not camera shy (or boat shy) at all. There were lots of murres out and about today!

When we got on scene with the whales they were zig-zagging a lot, but we finally found a nice group of about half a dozen animals that had a destination in mind, and we were able to parallel them as they traveled south at a speed of about 7 knots. Closest to us was the 16 year-old male L89 Solstice. It looks like he's starting to get a little bit of a "wave" to his fin, too, kind of like we see on J27 Blackberry:

Solstice belongs to a sub-group of L-Pod known as the L12s who often travel separate from the rest of L-Pod. Several other of these whales were present, too, like Solstice's mom L22 Spirit, but it wasn't until I got home and looked at my photos that I figured out a couple of the other whales we were looking at were L2 Grace and her son L78 Gaia, who are pictured here with a sailboat in the background:

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