Beam Reach

whales, sharks, and good times

what a day for whale watching it was this last thursday!

off the southern end of San Juan around noon time we found two leading whales from J pod, with the rest of the group scattered widely further south amongst the many whale watch boats. while we did manage to get some good click data, the whales were generally quiet and it was hard to find or get to them considering how spread out they were.

But finally after all the whale watch boats left Salmon Bank our patience paid off and we found a group of 5-6 whales and recorded many clear calls, clicks, and whistles in very serene calm water and clear sunny skies – we saw a lot of action too – pectoral and tail slaps, breaches, and yes, even some dork!!!!! (all within 100-200m!) we think these two lovebirds were just playing- we did make a few matches, and with further analyzing we’re going to try to ID those two as well. Hands down we all agreed it was our best day yet.

We tried again yesterday to catch up to the whales, but they moved too quickly north for us to catch up. The day was still exciting- we encountered a headless shark around False bay, which we believe is a thresher shark- and it looks like there are teeth mark where the head was taken- suggesting perhaps some Orcas got to it! We brought it aboard (and it sure was soupy) and passed it along to FHL for them to necropsy- and I spent the rest of my day getting some echosounder data from False bay to Lime Kiln, and then burst another light bulb at a deeper depth- I think I really got some good sound on this one!

so it looks like our work it cut out for us these next 3 weeks- i can’t believe we only have 3 weeks left- I’m going to try and make the most of it while I can

i’m off to try and make my own anemone for my service project…