When the A34s were last heard they were off the western end of Blackfish Sound the previous evening.
Then after a humpback had more or less finished in Blackfish Sound, the A34s were heard once again but this time off the entrance to Blackney Pass around 4am. It is possible that they used Blackney to access Johnstone Strait in the long interval between the previous evening and the present. Or they once again chose Weynton Pass to eventually arrive off the entrance to Blackney Pass on the Johnstone Strait side. With so little consistent calling, exact movements were difficult to describe. In the end they were in Johnstone Strait in a more or less exact location. Calls ended with the A34s further along in the Strait by 4:30am, possibly heading west.
A humpback in Blackfish Sound obliged from 6:30am to 7:09am.
Then at 8:11am, the A34s were heard again in Blackfish Sound. Their daily rounds had taken them through Weynton Pass and into Queen Charlotte Strait. Calls grew steadily stronger as the whales made their way east. Daylight brought with it the advantage of Alex being able to see them and determine how they were travelling. At 11:53am she saw what she took to be the A34 group, -the A67s, who may have been further ahead. At 12:17pm another group, who Alex identified as the A62s, appeared from the north moving fast to join those A34s. The two groups then became tight with each other and proceeded to Weynton Pass.
At 12:29pm there were already A34 calls in Johnstone Strait and it was speculated that this was the A67s who had possibly been ahead of the other two groups. It did not take long before calls were being bounced around several stations as the whales moved east.
By 1:17pm, the whales had progressed far enough east to be heard on the Cracroft Point system. Seven minutes later, a few small fins were located by the remote camera in the vicinity of Little Kaikash closer to the Vancouver Island shore. This more or less coincided with a report of nine whales (perhaps the A34/62 group freshly out of Weynton Pass) headed east in Johnstone Strait.
By 3pm, all calls were from around the Cracroft Point/ Blackney Pass area as the whale moved into the rip once again to forage. They stayed there, on camera, until 3:47pm when they began to move north into Blackney Pass proper. This movement was accompanied by close calls and echolocation on the Parson Island station.
Echo, A55, came in first at 4:06pm. He was followed by his mum, Simoom, brother Hope and sister Rainy and her youngster, Maple. His sister, Eclipse brought her A67 group along before his other sister, Misty and her A62 group, followed. They indulged in some more foraging before disappearing into Blackfish Sound where they continued to hunt and produce lots of echolocation and especially nice calls from the A62s.
Too soon the fading calls ended but Alex was once again able to provide details. At 6:06am she could see the A34s moving west toward the north shore of Malcolm Island along with the inevitable dolphins who had been present with the orcas most of the day.
What followed was another humpback effort in Blackfish Sound from 7:41pm until 9:18pm. Then a little bit more humpback at 10:58pm in Blackney Pass this time.
