From midnight to 3am approximately we had the impression that the A54s and the I15 groups (the I4s, I27s, I65s) were going east through Johnstone Strait from a starting point of Blackney Pass. We never heard the A5s again and supposed that they may have gone off to the west instead.
The I15s and the A54s spent the night together and by daybreak they were still there, only now headed west. The movement west, from the east end, perhaps started as early as 3:51am when calls resumed after a forty-five minute pause. Perhaps the whales might have been too far for us to hear them. Featured in the western movement were; the echolocation at 5:07am on Strider along with the faint calls on Kaizumi which gave clear indication to the new direction, the echolocation on Kaizumi which told of their progress west in the Strait, the closer echolocation on Kaizumi which confirmed their proximity to that part of the Strait, the close A30 (insert A54) calls on Kaizumi which helped us understand that the A30s were in the lead (for now), the rub which started at 8:26am at Strider which gave us an understanding as to how spread out the various groups were, and finally the close echolocation on Parson Island at 9:13am which meant that some of whales had made it to the entrance to Blackney Pass.
When the orcas came into view of the Lab it was the I15s who came first. They only took ten minutes to make it to Blackfish Sound.
The A54s were much slower and stayed in the Strait till 12:32pm when they came into Blackney Pass. This was a hour after hearing the last of the I15 calls fade into the distance. The A54s took about a half hour to transit Blackney. Just after 1pm they disappeared into Blackfish Sound.
In the next hour that passed. Two humpbacks breached near White Beach Pass. Possibly a mum and baby. A sports fishing boat ran into them. Thankfully, Straitwatch talked with the boater later.
At 2:51pm, the A54s came slowly back into Blackney Pass, very slowly. It was almost two hours before they left in the direction of Johnstone Strait. They came out of Blackney Pass, as seen by the CP remote camera, and headed east at 6:54pm. They must have angled over to Vancouver Island because there was a rub at 6:02pm west of the Bight.
The rub only lasted 5 minutes but there were at least five members of the A54s involved.
Now it was a progression to the east; at 6:48pm the echolocation on Critical Point indicated that they had come as far as Robson Bight, one “chuff” as they brushed over the stones at Strider at 7:42pm told us that they had no intention of stopping their eastward journey, and finally the their silence meant that they had gone past the range of our hydrophones. The I15s and the A54s would spend another night together.
We enjoyed a rare uneventful evening. Many from our group had gone to the “Boat Bay Party”, an annual event held by Cetus who manages the Ecological Reserve Warden programme and the Cliff Research site. Outstanding for many at Boat Bay was the unexpected display of Northern Lights. Back at the Lab we saw them too but were also enthralled by the starry sky that had been hidden from us on so many nights because of fog. Pretty sure as everyone looked into the skies at Boat Bay they were thrilled to see this twinkly canopy too.
