EncDate:12/07/22 

EncSeq:1

Enc#:40

ObservBegin:06:25 PM

ObservEnd:08:05 PM

Vessel:Orcinus

Other Vessel:

Staff:Dave Ellifrit

Other Observers:Rachel John, Kelley Balcomb-Bartok

Pods:J

LocationDescr:Boundary Pass and Haro Strait

Start Latitude:48 43.00

Start Longitude:123 10.00

End Latitude:48 39.70

End Longitude:123 14.61

 

EncSummary:

After receiving reports of southern residents heading down Boundary Pass, the team met at Snug Harbor and left in the boat at about 1800. We rounded Turn Point but it took a little time to spot our first whale about a half mile northeast of the lighthouse and the encounter started at 1825. The whales seemed to be very, very spread out but we had an initial small group and a couple of individuals porpoising toward the point. J19 was the first whale to pass us and the J41s porpoised past Turn Point nearer to the rocks. It took us another ten minutes or so to find our next whale. This was J47 and he was traveling quickly west along Stuart Island’s north shoreline near the west end of Prevost Harbor. J46 also appeared closer to shore and she stopped and milled briefly before continuing west. Several minutes later we found J42 heading southwest down Boundary by herself but were not seeing any other whales. We did a big loop up Boundary Pass past Blunden Island but could not find anymore whales so we headed back toward Turn Point to see if we could re-locate the leaders. By 1925, we were back off the point and had a few spread out whales just south of the point and one or two just north of it. J36 was the whale who appeared under the bluff and it was J42, again, behind her. Both whales were milling and appeared to be foraging. We caught a glimpse of a backlit J39 passing offshore of us but did not get a photo of him. There was an adult male north of Turn Point at the time too. This was J26 and he turned west and headed offshore. We also saw a small group to the northwest of J26 milling off the stern of a freighter. The group of four surfaced after a long dive traveling south mid-Haro Strait. This was the J35s and J44 and they were surfacing about once every twenty seconds on their short dives. There were a couple of other spread whales to the west of us but we weren’t seeing a lot of whales. We concluded that K pod was not present or at least not close enough to find before we lost our daylight. Our little group spread out and started porpoising south. We ended the encounter at 2005 about three quarters of a mile east of Tom Point on Gooch Island with what whales we could see spread out and porpoising south.