Localizing mother/calf pair
Saturday 9/1/07
Snug Harbor to Snug Harbor
Got a call from Giles saying KW were between False Bay and Lime Kiln. Dave Ellifrit of the Center for Whale Research volunteered that they might be heading north, but not definitely. We needed to pump out and pick up Captain Mike, so we headed for Roche Harbor. Mike and Jason arrived just as we finished pumping out and Mike took the helm as we steamed through Mosquito Pass. By that time the J pod had headed south and diverged from the southern end of San Juan Island (Marla was with them by then). We took the hypotenuse and encountered the pod just N of Hein Bank. Straitwatch approached to see who we were and we met Hillary and Sally. Tim talked Hillary into doing a few drive bys and we recorded her at high and low speeds at ~400m range. Then we followed the fleet back towards False Bay and caught up to the pod leaders around 5 pm. Just as we deployed the array and heard a few calls while heading north, Ruffles and Granny made a sharp left turn and headed SW. We waited a bit, then made a similar turn. Slowly the off- and on-shore whales headed back south. We paralleled and intermittently heard great calls. The final half hour or so was the best with a lone juvenile approaching the boat, making some powerful calls, and then rejoining two adults (females). Some 20 minutes later, we heard a group of (3?) whales foraging and then tracked them (including magnetic bearings from Todd’s hand-bearing compass) as the passed us. Both encounters led to successful localizations!
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alexandra071
September 5th, 2007 at 16:44
Except that it turns out that the recordings we got weren’t useful because the gain was set too high 🙁 A word of warning to the JaMi group when you guys do your hydrophone recordings! We’ve learned our lesson.