Friday, September 28, 2007
We woke up at Snug harbor and Leslie rang to tell us that she could hear the whales off Lime Kiln, so we lifted anchor right after breakfast and put off our morning chores until later. We spent most of the morning chasing the whales—writing down pager information, listening to the radio, and making phone calls to try to figure out which way they were headed.
Shannon and Ash heated up left over lasagna and bread pudding for lunch, as we made our way to Hein Bank, where there were reports of J, K, and L pods. We deployed the hydrophone array and the high frequency hydrophone and began our recording attempts for the day. We switched direction a number of times, alternating between pure sailing and motor sailing, as we tried to record calls, clicks, and whistles of individuals. A rope got momentarily wrapped around the starboard prop, as Scott and Tim were trying to deploy the high frequency. We sailed back to the west coast of San Juan Island and were going to head back to Snug Harbor early, when we saw J1 and a couple of other whales. Shelmar, a research vessel collecting the breath of killer whales with petri dishes suction cupped to a 24 ft pole in order to analyze bacteria, was also there. Tim took advantage of the opportunity to deploy a buoy and record drive-by’s, but the clicks and calls of nearby whales drowned out their jet engines. So, Anne once again attempted to deploy the hydrophone array vertically. A tanker was passing by, so we aren’t sure what the sound files will look like. Just as we were getting ready to call it a day, a large number of whales resting and slowly traveling in a line through the sunset approached us, followed afterwards by a lone minke whale. We finally pulled back into Snug about 8 pm after traveling over 37 miles today.
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