This summary begins surprisingly on September 30. Surprising because most of the day had gone by uneventfully until 10:48pm when very faint calls of the A34s were heard in Johnstone Strait. These were soon followed by calls rebounding onto another hydrophone as the whales made way eastward after their entrance to Johnstone Strait via Weynton Passage.
Five hours then passed without further notice of their progress. Humpbacks, however, filled the void with increasingly complicated sets of calls. Dolphins and even Bigg’s contributed before 3:44am when the A34s again made their presence known for alost as hour. Still in Johnstone Strait and now further east they managed a three minute rub two hours later starting at 5:42am. The morning of October 1 was underway but the light was not sufficient to watch the rub on the surface or underwater cameras. They most likely kept going east.Just over an hour and a half echo location on Main Rubbing beach signalled a return west and sure enough at 7:34am they made another rub at Strider Beach. It was ever so brief but Lydia caught the fly by and more importantly the regrouping of A34’s family offshore in the high waves, rain and current. It had been blowing hard all night and the morning conditions were the same. Whitecaps adorned the water.
The whales pushed their way toward Robson Bight and arrived there around 8am. They curled around the slightly calmer waters of the Bight before continuing west. Progress was not hurried and they were only just approaching the Cracroft Point area at 9:43am. It took a while to locate the whales in the waves. They had had dolphins with them for their whole journey. The dolphins looked as if they were enjoying leaping high over the waves.
The flooding current had yet to change to the ebb and so the whales marked time off the Cracroft Point area by foraging and milling about with those dolphins.
Eventually, about an hour before the current was about to change (at 1:40pm) they started their move into the entrance of Blackney Pass and north through Blackney Pass itself. They wer in sight by 12:33pm. The waves made observations as challenging as they had been on the camera compounded by the fact the whales were spread out. There were ensuing discussions as to whether A34’s daughter, A67 and her group were there or not. It was left as an unsatisfying question mark but as the two groups had been travelling consistently with each other most guesses favoured their inclusion. The whales excited Blackney Pass for Blackfish Sound at 2:06pm. The ebb was not well underway, encouraging their ease west to Queen Charlotte Strait. The last calls heard came at 3:32pm.
With the passing of the whales the day settled back into routines, watching the sea lions deal with the wind, keeping dry and bracing ourselves against the wind.
By evening, the winds had abated somewhat and with that change came rain. One humpback made an impressively extended call as darkness descended. The rest of the evening belonged to humpback mumbles and grumbles.
