End of 2014: J-Pod Visits, Year List Recap

As another calendar year winds to an end, I thought my bird and whale sightings had about wrapped up for the year. While in Portland for Christmas I did have a nice walk at the Crown-Zellerbach trail that turned up about 30 species including the likes of sandhill cranes, cackling geese, western scrub-jays, and ring-billed gulls that aren't common species on the island. On our way back north, a very chilly walk at Nisqually NWR turned up the usual duck species, three bald eagles, a peregrine falcon, and this great blue heron, who we watched eat a salamander:

Turns out that would be the end of the birding for the year, so let's take a look at the year list totals:

	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Total # Bird Species	233	203	222	192	201
Dave's Total	237	206	275/205*	192	179
Dad's Total		230	204	222	250
# States/ Provinces	6	4	5	4	5
# Life Birds	23	3	6	3	11
# SJ County Species	133?	157	145	149	142
# Species by Month
January	87	114	105	110	86
February	19	13	52	6	57
March	25	12	3	14	8
April	21	25	12	20	13
May	37	17	24	10	9
June	24	2	14	5	6
July	1	4	0	1	1
August	2	4	3	2	0
September	3	5	0	1	5
October	2	1	6	0	11
November	4	4	0	22	5
December	8	2	3	0	0

* World total/ Europe total

I just barely snuck into my target range of 200+ species this year. After an astonishing tie last year, this also feels like the first earned "win" in my annual year list challenge against Dave in England.  Not surprisingly, I got trounced again though by my now retired and free to travel a lot more Dad. :) The high totals on my list in February and for life birds were boosted by the trip to Southern California and Mexico, with another unusual spike in October when I made it east of the Cascades for my birthday trip. I'm actually surprised that with the Baja trip I didn't end up with even 10 more species than on last year's list. In 2015 the target will be the same 200 species mark, and we'll kick it off for the second year in a row on San Juan Island instead of in Oregon.

Surprisingly, the holidays didn't mark the end of my whale-watching for the year. My first full day back on island, December 30, included a visit from J-Pod! My boat is out of the water for the time being, but luckily a friend let me tag along as he headed out to look for the whales. We met up with them off Stuart Island, heading north.

J34 Doublestuf and J22 Oreo

The whales were SUPER spread out, with just ones and twos over at least 5+ miles. We were out there for over an hour, and probably saw 6-8 different whales during that time, when all of the 25+ members of J-Pod were out here somewhere.

Luckily, one of the whales we got to see was J27 Blackberry, who had been satellite tagged two days prior.

J27 Blackberry passes the Turn Point Lighthouse on Stuart Island

You can read more about the tagging project and follow his latest tracks on NOAA's website here. From the tag, we learned that earlier in the day, around 4-5 AM, Blackberry went waaaay up into Eastsound on Orcas Island, very unusual for the residents! But they've been taking lots of unusual travel patterns lately, as they've been spotted near Orcas Island and in Spieden Channel quite a lot this year.

The satellite tagging issue remains a controversial one, but I'm a strong supporter of it in hopes that the data it yields about winter travel patterns of these endangered Southern Residents leads to the increased protections they need. Data from whales tagged in previous years are the driving force behind a current petition to NOAA about expanding the Southern Residents' critical habitat range to include the outer coast from Washington to California. You can read more about why I support tagging on a previous blog post here.

J27 Blackberry with satellite tag visible as a bump on the right side of his dorsal fin - click to see a larger view

While for the most part the whales were in foraging/traveling mode, we did see one huge breach from Blackberry! I only caught the blurry end of it, but love the arcs of water off his pec fins so much I wanted to post it anyway:

It was such a beautiful day to be on the water - very cold, but flat calm waters and bright sunshine. And as we say in the Pacific Northwest, "the mountains were out" :)

Mt. Baker and the Turn Point light station

It's always a pleasure to see J2 Granny, and she spent some time hanging out near us too:

J2 Granny

Just about when it was time to leave, we saw a nice big spyhop:

We didn't know it at the time, but nearby the Center for Whale Research was getting their first looks at a brand new baby: J50 was born to J16 Slick sometime in the last couple days! Check out their website at the link above to see some awesome photos of the new calf. After a very difficult year for the Southern Residents in which their numbers dipped to 77 and no successful births for over two years, I can't help but hope that J50 is a good omen going into 2015. Slick has certainly been a prolific mama as this is her sixth known calf. She's tied for the oldest documented mother at age 42. Her other living offspring are J26 Mike, J36 Alki, and J42 Echo.

Thank you all for continuing to follow my whale and wildlife adventures, and I'm sure there will be plenty more in store for 2015!

Two Weeks, Two Strandings

On December 4th came the sad news that a dead killer whale had washed up near Comox, British Columbia. It took a few hours before we knew the identity of the whale, and sadly we learned it was J32 Rhapsody, an 18 year-old female in J-Pod.

J32 Rhapsody breaches in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in August 2013

Often, when a whale dies, we may not know for weeks or months. For Southern Residents, who are always in such tight family groups, our best evidence of a whale death is typically the rest of its family returning to inland without it. It's unusual for us to know right when a whale dies, and even rarer for the body to be recovered. A large group of whales, presumably J-Pod, had been seen near Comox on December 3^rd. When she was first seen floating off the beach on the morning of December 4^th, Rhapsody had probably been dead less than 24 hours. 

It's sad when we lose any whale, but particularly when it's a breeding-age female, the age/sex class so critical if this population is going to recover. Earlier this season, rumors were running rampant that Rhapsody might be pregnant, because she looked particularly robust in several breach photos. She's always been a round whale, and there's no reliable visible signs of pregnancy on orcas, so we didn't know if she was really carrying a calf or not, but at 18 years of age, we were all surely hoping she was. The gift in her death will be the knowledge we could gain from her. Was she fertile or infertile? Was she pregnant, or has she ever miscarried? What's in her stomach? What are her toxin loads? What diseases does she carry? Why did she die?  

J32 Rhapsody right off the rocks at Lime Kiln in June 2014

A necropsy occurred two days later with dozens of people, including Ken Balcomb, in attendance. The first news to emerge from the day is that several of Rhapsody's teeth have been illegally sawed off and taken as souvenirs by someone overnight. The next news is that Rhapsody was indeed pregnant, with a full term calf. It's a devastating blow to this population, particularly because we later find out the calf was female. About a week later Ken Balcomb posts an informal summary of the necropsy; the official report is probably at least weeks away, since numerous lab tests are still pending. In short, the fetus preceded Rhapsody in death. She appeared to get an infection from difficulty in expelling the calf, and this ultimately resulted in her death.

As 2014 draws to a close, we have gone 28 months without a successful birth among the Southern Residents. L120 was the first known birth in two years, in September, but he/she only lived for seven weeks. With Rhapsody's death, we now know we've lost not only a breeding female, but another potential calf as well.

It's a tough blow. The Southern Residents are down to just 77 whales, lower than when they were listed as endangered in 2005. But the silver lining is that this seems to have sparked a new, stronger wave of dedication and activism, and as the momentum is building, I can only hope that we see big things happen in 2015, for the sake of the orcas. I will definitely be in the middle of it all, doing everything I can.

There are a lot of photos of Rhapsody lying dead on the beach, so if you want to see those you can easily find them elsewhere. I prefer to remember her as she was in life - a vivacious young whale, full of so much potential:

J32 Rhapsody, August 2014

A week to the day after Rhapsody's necropsy, I'm at home on a Saturday morning when I read on Facebook a report of a small dead killer whale washed up on South Beach, here on San Juan Island. It can't be, I tell myself. But with J-Pod having headed west the day before, the doubts creep in. I know it's probably a Dall's porpoise, but I have to go look. I brace myself on the drive down for what I might see.

I arrive at the same time as another local whale lover, and we're the first ones on scene. We see an eagle sitting on the beach next to a carcass and start heading that way. At first it looks like a sea lion, but as we get closer, I can see the pectoral fin and tail flukes sticking up in the air. My heart jumps to my throat for a split second as we get even closer, until I can see for sure that it is in fact a Dall's porpoise. It's an amazingly fresh animal - dead, but completely in tact. 

It's fascinating to see an animal like this up close. The fear that chased me down here starts to give way to wonder at seeing a cetacean like this up close.

It's an adult female, a little over six feet long and probably weighing about 300 pounds. There's no sign of trauma on her anywhere - no rake marks from transients, no wounds or signs of disease. The only thing I notice is that it looks like she hardly has any teeth!

I learn later that Dall's porpoise have very unusual teeth to begin with. The teeth are very small and are separated by growths called "gum teeth". So maybe this isn't so unusual, though I the expert that does the necropsy confirms that some of her teeth were indeed missing.

A crowd has begun to gather by this time, including some members of the stranding network and other curious whale folks who had the same fears I did when they heard the report. Among them is one of our local whale watch captains, who is celebrating a big birthday and has the extended family in town. This proves to be fortunate, because we have to find a way to get the animal down the beach to a truck so it can be transported to the Friday Harbor Labs where the necropsy will occur. A little ingenuity goes a long way, as we fashioned a sling out of some driftwood and straps out of someone's car and took turns carrying her the quarter-mile or so to the parking area.

As we load her into the back of a truck, I think we all feel a moment of sadness. It was a huge relief that we didn't have another dead killer whale on our hands, but the loss of this porpoise is a sad thing to witness, too.

Her necropsy occurs two days later, and while I don't attend, I get a full report from a couple friends. It turns out this stranded cetacean was pregnant, too, but with a male calf no where near full term. It's determined she was an older animal that died of a bad lung infection. Her stomach and intestines were empty, indicating that she probably wasn't able to eat for some time because of the disease.

We get the opportunity to learn an amazing amount from cetaceans when they strand, but after two such experiences in two weeks, I'm definitely ready for all of the local whales, dolphins, and porpoises to stay in the water, alive and well, where they belong!

A Surprise Visit From Residents

Last year, we were treated to a superpod traveling past Lime Kiln on Thanksgiving Day. This year, it sounded like the Puget Sound area would be treated to the same thing. On the day before Thanksgiving, all 78 members of the Southern Resident Community were documented heading east from Victoria and then south towards the Sound. The whales did indeed spend Thanksgiving and the day after traveling around Puget Sound in several groups, but by Saturday we had reports of orcas around the San Juan Islands, too! At first, it sounded like transients. When I heard from a friend they were heading towards Reuben Tarte County Park, I headed out to take a look.

With strong northeast winds, San Juan Channel was solid white caps. I wasn't sure if the whales were still coming or had already past, but I stood out there in sub-freezing temps and high winds scanning for about 15 minutes. Just about the time I couldn't feel my hands anymore, I spotted something that looked more like a whale splash than a white cap. Keeping my eyes trained on the spot, I spotted what I thought was a blow. I was just on my way home from getting groceries, and of course it was one of the rare times I didn't have my camera or binoculars with me, but a few minutes later I was sure. It was definitely orcas!

Once they started making their way north, they passed me by in a hurry. It looked like a group of about half a dozen animals traveling tightly together with an adult male trailing behind them. It was tough to see any saddle patches in the choppy water, but something about them felt more like residents than transients, though with orcas having been spotted in Deer Harbor and Westsound earlier, transients seemed a lot more likely. I didn't see any more coming, however, and was so cold, that I had to give it up after I lost them in the rough seas as they continued north. I heard a little bit later, however, that a second group of about as many animals followed behind them - now I was pretty convinced they were residents! A bit later I got confirmation from another friend who had picked them up - J-Pod and K-Pod!

The unofficial San Juan winter whale watchers were in full alert mode, with everyone giving each other updates as best we could to make sure everyone got a chance to see the whales. When I heard they went west through Spieden Channel, my thoughts immediately went to taking the boat out. I was afraid it was too windy after the water conditions I saw at Reuben Tarte, but I went to look on the west side and was pleasantly surprised by how calm it was - the wind was coming from the opposite side of San Juan Island.

The timing ended up working out perfectly for a visiting friend of mine and I to jump out and pick up K-Pod just off Henry Island before sunset.

Found 'em! Orcas hugging the shoreline of Henry Island

By this point, J-Pod had disappeared somewhere, perhaps having gone north. We had all of K-Pod traveling together in two large groups.

K21 Cappuccino on the left

The boat is so low to the water that I've actually had a bit of a hard time getting my photos in focus! The lighting was so pretty, though, that I just snapped away and hoped for the best, and did get a few to turn out!

My favorite shot of the short encounter!

K26 Lobo

All too soon, the sun went down. The light changed quickly and, already cold, it suddenly got a lot colder!

K26 Lobo and K44 Ripple

We let them pass us by and then headed back to port. It was short, but especially this time of year, so sweet!