Following the Northern Resident’s return on August 12th, the Lab was once again busy on August 13th as we actively followed their movements while they remained in the area covered by the remote hydrophone network. At 4:56 am, faint Orca calls were heard off the western edge of Blackfish Sound. The calls were identified as A1s. There was also consistent underwater vessel noise from a tug that moved east from Blackfish Sound into Blackney Passage with the whales. The boat noise masked most of the calls and made it difficult to follow the whales’ progress as they continued south in the dark. Outside on deck, the blows of the whales were finally heard near the southern edge of Blackney Passage at 5:45 am. Around the same time, the calls were more clearly heard as the whales moved into and through the entrance way to Johnstone Strait. As the sun started to rise, the whales were seen on the Cracroft Point remote camera at 5:55 am as they headed into Johnstone Strait. Momoko, who was monitoring the remote camera, saw only a small group and it was decided that we had been listening to the A50 matriline. From there the A50s moved across Johnstone Strait and their calls became clearer as they approached Kaizumi Rubbing Beach for a quick 1 minute rub at 6:54 am. The A50s were later heard at 7:28 am and seen at 7:44 am further east in Johnstone Strait, continuing their direction east.
At 8:17 am, another group was heard in Blackfish Sound by our neighbours at Double Bay Sanctuary. At 8:47 am, A1 orca calls registered on our Flower Island hydrophone in Blackfish Sound. These whales were acoustically identified as the A34 matriline. At 9:00am, things became quite busy in the Lab, with the A34 calls continuing in Blackfish Sound at the same time as the A50s continued to call in Johnstone Strait.
The A50s continued heading east in the Strait and were later seen on the Strider Rubbing Beach remote camera approaching the shore for a rub, which began at 10:14 am. The rub lasted until 10:29 am, at which point Pacific White-sided Dolphins were also seen and heard approaching the rubbing beach. The whales promptly stopped rubbing and left the beach, again heading east in Johnstone Strait. At 11:04 am, we received a report from Cetus that the A50s were heading towards the eastern boundary of the Robson Bight (Michael Bigg) Ecological Reserve.
At 12:10 pm, we noted the report on the PWWA app that orcas were approaching Weynton Passage from Blackfish Sound. The time and location of the report suggests these were likely the A34s.
At 12:25 pm, we received another report from Cetus that the A50s in Johnstone Strait had turned and were heading back west along the Cracroft Island shoreline, slowly moving in a resting line under the cliff at “Eagle Eye”, the Robson Bight Wardens land-based monitoring location, across from the Robson Bight (Michael Bigg) Ecological Reserve.
Back to the A34s, at 1:10 pm, we received a report from Scotty that the A34’s minus the A62s were present. This was the same grouping that had been in earlier in the month. At 2:04 pm, the A34s made it into our hydrophone network range on the western end of Johnstone Strait and calls were heard from the A50s further east in Johnstone Strait. With both groups potentially starting to head towards each other in Johnstone Strait, we wondered when and where their meet-up would happen.
It wasn’t until 3:53 pm that A50 calls were heard again, this time near Cracroft Point, the area between Johnstone Strait and Blackney Passage. This was confirmed with a report from Straitwatch that the A50s were westing towards Cracroft Point. At 4:08 pm, we spotted the A50s on the remote camera at Cracroft Point heading west nearshore.
At 5:28 pm, the A34s were reported travelling north in Weynton Passage towards Blackfish Sound. The A34s had decided to turn out of Johnstone Strait and return to Blackfish Sound and by 5:50 pm we heard their faint calls for the second time off the western end of Blackfish Sound.
At 6:39 pm, the A50s were spotted in the rip off Cracroft Point via the remote camera and making headway north into Blackney Passage after milling in the area for over 2.5 hours. Ahead of the slack tide by an hour at 6:47 pm, the A50s were finally spotted from the Lab travelling north. At the same time, we were still hearing calls from the A34s in Blackfish Sound.
By 7:15 pm, calls from both the A34s and the A50s were on the same hydrophone in Blackfish Sound. By 7:24 pm, all the A50s had cleared from our view from the Lab and headed north into Blackfish Sound.
At 8:34 pm, we received a report from Alex Morton that both of these A1 groups were heading north along the edge of the Broughton Archipelago breaching, pec slapping, and spy-hopping near the White Cliff Islands. At 10:58 pm, our neighbours at Double Bay Sanctuary heard some final distant orca calls.
The meeting between the two matrilines we’d been waiting for all day likely happened out of sight in Blackfish Sound, where they expectedly reshuffled themselves and will give us a new puzzle to solve on their whereabouts tomorrow!
Words by Olivia Murphy
