The day began with the chatter of dolphins near Robson Bight just after midnight. The A54s’ passage north through Blackney Pass began around 1am after they had trucked back “up” Johnstone Strait after disappearing east of the Ecological Reserve the previous day.
It took them about an hour to all finally clear into Blackfish Sound. We followed their sounds west for a while longer and listened once again at 3am to the dolphins remaining in Johnstone Strait. The rest of the night belonged to very active humpbacks feeding, breaching and blowing. The ocean is never really quiet.
Daylight at first brought no information about the whereabouts of the A54s. A lone Minke Whale was spotted at 9:43am off Freshwater Bay, repeating several sightings of a lone Minke for the past few days in the Blackfish Sound/Blackney Pass area.
The A54s then began making an appearance coming back from Queen Charlotte Strait around 11:25am easting to Donegal Head. The Bigg’s orcas, the T060s, were not far away and both groups went through Weynton Pass and into Johnstone Strait. At 12:49pm, the A54s were poised off the western end of Hanson Island. At 1:23pm, they were opposite Big Bay and still moving eastward slowly. Simultaneously, as they called in the Strait, A4 calls were heard on the Flower Island system in Blackfish Sound.
The A54s had reached the Cracroft Point area by 2:33pm and Straitwatch reported that they had spread out at first while 800 meters off Cracroft then regrouped to continue eastward.
By 2:48pm, Tomoko, in the Lab, was able to discern A1 calls in Blackfish Sound in addition to the A4 calls heard previously. Olivia, could see from Donegal Head, that the incoming whales were spread out and foraging from Bold Head to Flower Island. The A54s were maintaining off of Cracroft Point but some were now edging into the entrance of Blackney Pass.
The very scattered orcas arriving from Blackfish made way toward Johnstone Strait and the waiting A54s. The first through were the A52s followed by the A34s (-A62s) between 3:38pm and 4:27pm . A96 and A132 were last travelling together mid channel at a good clip. A55 came along later at 4:30pm by himself. Scotty had watched him earlier foraging in Blackfish Sound. The flooding tide seemed to help carry him along towards the others at a good pace. By 4:49am he was visible on the Cracroft Remote video camera.
In the next while, the humpback Insomnia, surfaced just once close to the Lab at 4:59pm but did not engage in any bubblenet feeding and the various orca groups sorted themselves off of Cracroft Island and the entrance to Blackney Pass, with the A52s, making room by crossing a bit further east, perhaps as far as Izumi Rock. A55 was still visible on the Cracroft camera past 6pm. He had at first pointed east but then drifted back west and opposite Little Kaiakash as his family began to shift west toward and into Weynton Pass by 7:48pm. They must have passed the T060s and T069s who were seen off Big Bay on their way west.
By 7:19pm, the A52s had begun to backtrack through Blackney Pass. They were followed by the A54s. Both groups had cleared the Lab’s view by 8:03pm.
The A34s made it through Weynton Pass around 9:15pm. They skirted across Blackfish Sound and into Queen Charlotte Strait after the others had already done so.
Though the rest of the night was absent of orca calls we later understood that the groups made yet another circuit into Johnstone Strait.
