July 7th started with T060C making a brief appearance around 8:00 AM. T060C, also known as Yelnats, was first seen on the far side of Blackney Passage along the Parson Island shore going north. We lost sight of him when a tug towing two barges went past, blocking our view of the far shore for periods. At 8:13 AM, we again saw Yelnats, but this time he appeared to be rounding Burnt Point from Blackfish Sound. This change of direction, coupled with not seeing him for multiple minutes, made us question whether it was a different orca. Further observation indicated that it was indeed T060C. He then made a small loop in the northern part of Blackney Passage before disappearing from our view again into Blackfish Sound. While we never saw the rest of his family, they couldn’t have been far away, as a report from Seasmoke Whale Watching informed us that they had found the T060s around Foster Island at 9:22 AM.
Around 3:00 PM, the humpback Insomnia entered Blackney Pass from Blackfish Sound, rounding Burnt Point close to shore. Off Burnt Point, Insomnia lunged and fluked multiple times before rounding Burnt Point again and moving out of our view. At approximately 5:00 PM, Insomnia again appeared at Burnt Point, solo bubble-net feeding. Over the course of an hour, Insomnia went back and forth from Burnt Point to Sea Lion Rock bubble net feeding. There were at least 8-10 individual bubble net feeding events. Insomnia was extremely close to shore at times, 30 meters off the Lab deck and roughly 5 meters from shore. We could see the bubbles from shore and hear the bubbles on our hydrophone as well as Insomnia’s bubble net feeding calls. Our local center hydrophone was recently deployed in front of the lab by Jérémie. At 5:55 PM, it seemed as though Insomnia had moved on, out of our view and back into Blackfish Sound. Around 9:00 PM, as it was getting dark, we were amazed yet again when Insomnia came back into view and bubble net fed two to three more times out front of the Lab before leaving our view again, this time heading south. All the assistants at the Lab were ecstatic to get such an amazing view of solo bubble-net feeding, knowing we were viewing from shore and not interfering with Insomnia’s behavior.
