From midnight to almost 6am the A54s, the familiar I15 groups (the I4s, I27s and I65s), the A23s and A25s continued on their easterly trek in Johnstone Strait. They took a long time.
During this time, around 12:30am, Pacific White-sided dolphins chatted in Blackfish Sound for an hour and the A5 groups became more evident.
At 2:53am the orcas passed Robson Bight.
At 4:36am, the I15s began an incredible outburst of calls, highly intense, excited and very close to the hydrophone at Strider. Interestingly it was not about rubbing. The A5 groups and A54s were offshore at some distance. A distant humpback made a few “whup” sounds. The energy in the calls was overwhelming. People woke up and began texting with the Lab about what they were hearing. Listening to the distant regular calls of the A5s and A30s in the background made Alex wonder if the “As” might be having a calming influence on whatever was going on because shortly after the I15s indeed started to quiet down..
There was no end to the speculation as to what caused the I15s such excitement. But later in the day we would get information that led us to believe that maybe the I16s had arrived and were the cause of the fuss. This is speculation, of course and there is no definitive proof.
The I16s are the fourth family unit within the I15s. Technically the term “I15” is not correct anymore as the four groups that had originally formed the I15s are now independent of each other since the death of I15 herself some years past. But the term serves to acoustically identify the group’s collectively shared dialect.
The I16s had not, to the best of our knowledge, come into the Blackfish/Johnstone area this year. The other three families that comprise the I15s are the I4s, I27s and I65s and they have been most definitely around, daily.
After the I15s calmed down all calls became distant and there may have been a change of direction for the whales. At least someone from the I15s had first moved east and after the general shift west happened came back over Strider beach for a single rub.
It was now 6:03am. The long night was over and it was time for the whales to move on. They wasted little effort. Getting back to Blackney took a fraction of the time spent in the early hours moving toward the Ecological Reserve.
At 7:33am, the orcas were in Blackney Pass going north. The A23s led and the A54s, I4s, I65s, I27s and finally the A25s followed. No I16s and no evidence that they had stayed in the Strait and gone west. So our hindsight theory seemed weak, at least for the time being.
Loud A5s calls in Blackfish were followed by distant ones. Calls ceased by 8:44am when the whales moved out of range into Queen Charlotte Strait where they would spend the rest of the morning.
In the wide generous area of Queen Charlotte Strait the whales did a sorting. The I15s moved toward the Malcolm Island shore while the A54s and two A5 matrilines headed back to Blackfish Sound.
Very faint “As” were heard at 1:50pm and these gradually grew louder as the A54s and A25s and A23s directed their attention to Blackney Pass. They would “come in” at 2:21pm.
This was the exact time that the I15s arrived at Bere Point where they had a nice rub. Troy Bright’s photos showed that the I16s were there and that they and the I4s, I27 and I65s had all arrived from the east! This is the very observation which led us to speculate about whether the I16s had been involved with the orcas in Johnstone Strait in the early hours of morning. If the I16s were new on the scene at bere point one might reasonably expect them to come from the west. But this was not the case here. Obviously pieces of the puzzle were missing.
Troy also provided some additional information. The I15s, after the rub, went west and arrived off Malcolm Point at 3:10pm. Kate lost track of them for an hour but re-sighted them as they turned to the east at 4:52pm. They came back for a second rub and then left to the east clearing Bere Point at 5:31pm.
The “As”, meanwhile, cleared Blackney by 2:50pm. We used the remote Cracroft Point camera to track their passage out from Blackney Pass, through the rip west of Cracroft Point, and then east. There were a lot of boats focused on the whales as they went through the rip but later when going east just one carried on with the whales to just west of the Western Boundary sign. A large slow tug was on the same general path as the whales. The noise from the tug was loud.
From this point we were surprised that the orcas did not seem to advance all the way to the Ecological Reserve. In fact their calls became faint and stayed that way until they were back in Blackney Pass at 5:27pm. Their passage north was completed at 6:04pm.
We then listened to the A5s and A30s in Blackfish Sound until 9:16pm.
And the I15s? They were heard at 10:50pm on the Flower Island station in Blackfish Sound encouraging us to believe the “As” and the I15s, were together again.
One very late faint call at 11:01pm added a final note on which to end the day.
