Date: 15-Sep-17

Sequence: 2

Encounter Number: 83

Enc Start Time: 15:15

Enc End Time: 16:23

Vessel: Orcinus

Observers: Dave Ellifrit and Kathy Babiak

Pods or ecotype:T ransients

Location: Beaumont Shoal and Baynes Channel

Begin Lat/Long: 48 27.94/123 11.25

End Lat/Long: 48 26.57/123 15.51

 

Encounter Summary:

As we were working in the office at CWR throughout the morning and early afternoon, we had heard reports over the radios of a couple of groups of transients coming in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. By around 1430, the T123s were reported to be near Seabird Point and the T10s were near the Chain Islets so Dave and Kathy grabbed their gear and headed down to the boat and left Snug Harbor at 1455. We arrived on scene at 1515 near Beaumont Shoal to find the T123s traveling slowly north. T123 and T123C were tight together but T123A was paralleling their course several hundred yards to the northeast. The three whales soon began to merge together and then they turned northeast. We left the T123s at 1535 traveling slowly northeast in a tight group toward False Bay almost halfway between Beaumont Shoal and False Bay.

The T10s were approaching Baynes Channel by that time so we headed back west and got on scene with them at 1545 on the south side of Baynes Channel just north of the Chatham Islands. T10 and T10C were traveling north in a tight group toward Ten Mile Point. The T10s surfaced on the north side of Jemmy Jones before moving northwest and circumnavigating Flower Island. They acted like they made a kill or were tearing apart something on the west side of the Island. The T10s then traveled back northeast along the shoreline toward Ten Mile Point. At 1615, T10C was milling in the kelp beds and rocks at Ten Mile Point and may have made another kill but we could not be sure. We left the whales pointed back southeast toward Beaumont Shoal 1623.