The past week has been incredibly rainy and cold. But not silent! Most nights, humpbacks have been practicing their songs in Blackfish Sound and gracing us with their ever diverse and complex vocalizations. We even heard some bubble net feeding activity too!
During the day, we have observed increasing humpback feeding activity in Blackney Pass. On October 8th, Nora was on deck and blown away by the events. Here is her recollection:
“I came back from a laundry run with Jérémie, just in time for my shift, when I was already talking to Jianna about all the humpbacks she saw today. Jianna, a volunteer and good friend by now, has been watching the whales for the last four hours before it was time for me to take over.
So I stood on deck, already prepared to be kept busy by all the humpbacks out in Blackney Pass today, when this did not happen. You read it right – the first hour was pretty quiet, a few blows now and then, a few pictures and IDs – I was just enjoying this beautiful, sunny and calm day.
Then – all of a sudden and just in time for my scan – the whole vibe started to shift. The humpbacks that had just seemed to be swimming around before were now getting active, feeding quite far away in line with Parson Bay. I asked for help, and Georgia – you have heard from her already – arrived in an instant. She monitored the camera so I could focus on putting all the humpbacks into the scan – what timing!
By now – only a few minutes had passed – we had five humpbacks trap and lunge feeding, pec slapping and breaching, all over Blackney Pass. Even though they were all quite far away, it was amazing to watch and to witness. With the information we had from Jianna, and by recognizing a few familiar fins, we could ID Freckles, Claw and her baby Auger and Ripple and her baby. Taking a look at all the pictures we took I possibly ID’d Graffiti in there too – so there must have been six!
I was amazed by everything that was happening, seeing all these humpbacks, so close to one another, the mother and baby pairs, in this beautiful light right in front of us – I can assure you, my difficulties to find words for this are not caused by a lack of vocabulary!
They were keeping us busy, changing places, stopping in their feast, then coming up again, swimming around. It was hard to keep track! Eventually, the scan was over, I took over the camera but since we already got a lot of pictures, I gave myself time to just witness. I wanted to take in this moment – listen to their blows, the gulls calling, water splashing, watching their massive mouths open wide, taking in all the details of every little bump, all the baleens and the pink inbetween.
It’s jaw-dropping to think about how big these animals are under the surface when you can only see a part of them. And it’s beautiful to feel a window open up for you to take a look into their world. A look into a world that is so unknown, so mysterious and full of so many speculations, that we still don’t know why certain behaviours are shown.
After about an hour, the humpbacks calmed down, Ripple and her baby left north, Claw and Auger were still around but seemed to be resting after all this excitement, Freckles must have left a while ago and the only one around was the possible Graffiti. It was time for my dinner now too, so I tidied up the deck and joined the rest of the group in the main house. The humpbacks seemed to have calmed down acoustically too, there were only a few grunts now and then. Maybe expressing their satisfaction?
Just when I was getting ready to go back to the lab someone started singing in Johnstone Strait. I was kept company by their calls, grunts, whistles and sounds for the whole evening – and even water splashes were heard on our hydrophones. I wondered, did they move the party elsewhere?
This will be a question to answer tomorrow – when I will be reviewing our nighttime recording, listening to their sounds, wondering what they are talking about.”
As for orcas, the only reports of Northern Residents we heard of lately were about the A42s, north Quadra Island on October 2nd and close to Cortes Island October 3rd.
Later, on October 7th, we had an incredible visit from a group of Bigg’s. This is Georgia’s telling of this event:
“It’s my last couple of days here on Hanson Island, and I had come to terms with the fact I may not see any more orcas before leaving, and I was okay with that. I was loving the amount of Humpback activity there was and putting the puzzle pieces together of trying to ID a new Humpback. But to my happy surprise we had one of the most exciting passes of my time here. Bigg’s are known to be sneaky and very quiet; popping up half way through Blackney Pass before we even spot them. Nora spotted them first on the far side of the channel heading South. As I ran onto the deck, hoping to see them, I was told they had gone on a dive, and from my experience watching Bigg’s, it was entirely possible that they would surface as they exited Blackney Pass into Johnstone Strait, but not today.
They took their time during this passage, we were able to see 1 male, 1 female, and 1 baby, and from photos could ID them as T055A, T055B & T055B1 who were last reported by Orcalab on September 17th. They spent their time milling about near Parson Island, swimming slowly along before diving again, and this time I was sure they would clear our view before they surfaced. But again, the T055’s proved me wrong. At 11:19am, 25 minutes into their passing, I spotted T055A & T055B traveling towards Hanson Island, directly towards the rocks covered in 70 sea lions that had hauled out this morning. We had seen something like this before, Bigg’s looking like they’re traveling towards the sea lions, possibly for a meal, but we had not seen any predation yet this summer.
Once the sea lions realized what the Bigg’s had in mind, they started frantically jumping into the water, which to all of us seemed like not the safest option for them, but maybe it is more about safety in numbers. T055A & T055B circled close to the rocks a couple of times, getting right up close to some of the groups of sea lions in the water, before they realized the two of them probably couldn’t take on 70 sea lions. The next thing we know, all three orcas surfaced right in front of the Lab! Barely 20m from our deck. They were so close you could feel the power behind their blows, and I’m sure if we tried hard enough, we could smell them. All of us stood there silently as we took in every detail of their dorsals, saddle patches, eye patches, and skin. I had never seen an orca this close, I felt like a kid again watching Free Willy and wanting nothing more than to see these incredibly smart animals in the wild. Even though I had been watching orcas all summer, this seemed different. They weren’t just passing through, they came here for a reason, and I allowed myself to muse that they knew my time here was running out and wanted to show me once more why I decided to choose this path for my life.”
