101 science narrative A text document for drafting and archiving the science blogbook entries. Please include day, location information, and narrative of the day's science deployments/findings. When possible, upload entries as separate (daily) posts with tag "Science BlogBook." Sunday 4/18/2010 FHL to Griffen Bay We left at about 3:45 and used the screech sail and motor to get there. We arrived around 5:00 Because it was our first day we didn't do any science but Jason saw a seal. We had great weather all day. Monday 4/19/2010 Griffin Bay to Port Townsend: We departed San Juan Island with the intention of sailing all the way to Neah Bay, but shortly after finishing our chores, Kathryn said the word everyone was hoping to hear "whale off Starboard!" We were able to identify Transientmale 87, and think we know some of the females as well. First the male was swimming with four others, then two groups converged for a bit of exciting times, and departed once again. Once we were joined by two whale-watching boats the whales seemed to lighten up and give us a show. We saw plenty of tail slaps and harmonious movements, and even a spy hop and peck slap were seen. Great first day of being on the boat! The sun was out for most of the day, and gentle wind, so we did not put up the sails. Tuesday 4/20/2010 Port Townsend to Port Townsend (Marine Science Center to Boat Haven) Departed Port Townsend after breakfast at about 8:00. Arriving out at Admiralty Inlet, both Jason and Scott performed their SnowPud experiment with lightbulbs and a hydrophone array. Scott, along with Nora and Libby, set out on the small dinghy, the Gatito. Taping lightbulbs at 10 meters apart from each other on a marked rope, it was lowered into to the water with the help of a weight. A hydrophone array was lowered on the starboard side of the Gato Verde, where Jason was stationed to prepare to record. A shackle with a weight would be sent down the lightbulbed rope, hoping to break all the lightbulbs. The sounds would be recorded by the hydrophone array at 100m, 200m, and 400m distance. Being in Admiralty Inlet made it difficult to perform exact distances, plus some lightbulbs did not break. Recordings were still taken. Docking at Boat Haven, Port Townsend Marina, we pumped out and charged the boat. Wednesday 4/21/2010 Port Townsend to Port Townsend (Boat Haven to Marine Science Center) We raised anchor early today and were out of Boat Haven by 0715. Capt. Todd had anticipated strong winds, but when we got out in open water, we realized the 35 knot gusts weren't worth the risk. We turned back toward Port Townsend around 0800 and tied up at the dock by the Port Townsend Marine Science Center. At 1400 we went to the science center to test the Flip videocamera in its underwater housing. We took footage of a juvenile octopus as we knocked on the glass, trying to get an idea of how sound from the outside affects the octopus's acoustic environment. We also used a hydrophone to listen to sounds inside several of the center's tanks to see whether or not the organisms were making any sounds. We deployed the same hydrophone into the ocean but realized we couldn't hear anything when we used the Marantz (which,we later realized, was due to a faulty XLR to quarter inch cable). Thursday 4/22/2010 Earth Day! Port Townsend to Snug Harbor After giving our regards to the mating river otters of Port Townsend, we motor sailed northwards practicing at the helm and sighting two puffins as we passed False Bay. Before entering Snug Harbor we tried out the YSI probe and the plankton net, devising a protocol for monitoring basic physical and biological oceanographic conditions where the southern residents focus their summertime attention. Finally, we tested out the Splashcam video while beginning our Earth Day project: searching for our mooring ball which was sunk by growth last winter. The camera wasn't very useful unless it was resting on the bottom, but we're hopeful that we can locate the old ball and replace it with our new (more buoyant) one so that we can minimize our impact on the Harbor, a place that we know is swept nearly bare of eel grass by anchor chains. Friday 4/23/2010 Snug Harbor to Snug Harbor We woke to a very quiet boat this morning since two of our crew ,Jason and Scott, were on land. We picked them up and decided to head down to Linekiln to try and find the missing hydrophones with the SplashCam. On the way we hit perfect sailing weather and decided to get some sailing practice in incase we decide to participate in the race tomorrow. When we got to Lime Kiln we deployed the camera and all was going great for a bout 20 minuets till the cord got cought on the Starbord propeller and got damaged. Since it was cought pretty good Scott had to dive down and unwrap ti manually! He managed to sucessfuly unwrap the cable. Then we decided to get some practice deploying the hydrophones. First we deployed the blue 4 hydrophone array, which I call Blueberry. That went smoothly and we got to record around the lighthouse to test if the lighthouse array is getting interferance from the lighthouse or from something in the water. After we brought Blueberry back on to the ship we deployed the flat hydrophone, Hiphone, which Libby will be using for her project. We tested it at a few different speeds to see what towing speed has the least interference. We had some animal sightings, we saw an otter and a harbor seal. Saturday 4/24/2010 Snug Harbor to Jones Island (North side) We practice deploying our hydrophones again today, this time under the careful watch of a watch. Hopefully we will get quicker as the probability of seeing the Southern Residents increases. We were also able to deploy the CT at 100 meters, meaning that Scott Veirs graced us with some sea shanties while hauling the cable. The most exciting part of the day was not very science related, but a chance to test and strengthen our sailing skills in a friendly competition with a local sailing group. What a lovely day! Tonight we are docked at Jones Island and will have a chance to wander around and enjoy the scenery. Thursday 4/29/2010 Friday Harbor to Jones Island We received a call today requesting assistance in the necropsy of another Steller sea lion. We met Joe at Orcas Island and made the short trip to the sea lion location. This was a lot like the last time, blunt trauma with severe bleeding in the abdominal region, heart, and lungs. The bruising of the tissues is something I have not experienced before, which was pretty neat. Jason and I met up with the rest of the crew in Friday Harbor, finalized packing the boat, and set our sights to Jones Island on the lovely Gato Verde. It feels good to be home on the boat. We had burittos for the first night of last week, and had to uphold the tradition again this first night. Hopefully the whales will join us tomorrow. Friday 4/20/2010 Jones Island to Prevost Harbor on Stuart Island We started today with the intention of finding the Orcas. Once we made it out into Haro Strait we realized that the winds were very strong and that even if we found the orcas it would be very challenging to deploy the hydrophones. We made amazing time so we decided to circumnavigate San Juan Island. We got a lot of sailing in and made it up to Stuart Island around 4:30 and had a sailing lecture before finding out that J pod had been spoted heading NOrth at Lime Kiln 1.5 hours prior. We dicided to go out to the point to see if we could spot them as they passed by. We went out and at the tip of the point there was a line of white water. It was the convergance zone of the massive upwellings caused by the tides moving over the rocks near teh point. There was a mass of gulls all feeding in teh upwellings. We went a bit further and saw some orcas. It was very exciting! We didnt ID them because they were too far away and they werent on the surface in any predictable pattern. We thought that they were foraging so the direction they were moving was hard to tell, but we thought they were moving North. Saturday 5/1/2010 Prevost Harbor to Mitchell Bay Since J Pod is back in town, our main goal today was to find the whales. We started drifting down the west side of San Juan Island hoping we'd find them in Haro Strait. Around 10 am, several Dall's porpoises surfaced off of Gato Verde's stern. Recently, Dall's sightings have been few and far between, so it was very exciting to see them! Once we had passed Lime Kiln Point State Park without any whale sightings, we decided to calibrate our hydrophones (the array, the "blue box," and the flat-frequency hydrophone). We rigged them up side by side and lowered them 5 meters below the surface. We made several successsful recordings. Later in the afternoon, we decided to try to search for the south hydrophone array with the Splashcam. Unfortunately we had technical difficulties and had to abort our mission, but Jason solved the problem and we will likely try to deploy the Splashcam again soon. After a morning and afternoon of no whales, we made the executive decision to start working our way back up the west side to find someplace to anchor for the night. The Southern residents seem to be swimming clockwise around the San Juan Islands, and we are hoping they'll loop back around to Haro Strait tomorrow. Sunday 5/2/2010 Mitchell Bay to Mitchell Bay We headed out towards the south side of the island in hopes of finding J pod. Not much wildlife sightings today, other then some seagulls. No updates on the phone or email on sightings of J pod either, which was sad for us to here. We had a general prediction that since they finally came back into the area, they are still looking for the fish to eat. It is like moving back home after college life in the dormitories: the whales have to resettle into the area. We anchored at Mackeye Harbor on Lopez Island to have a quick lunch consisting of grilled cheese sandwiches. At Mackeye, we finished our calibration exercise using the data that we got from the hydrophone calibration yesterday. Afterwards, we headed back up to Mitchell Bay, spotting about 3 seals (unidentified) poking their heads out of the waters. At Mitchell (Snug Harbor), we then enjoyed at nice dinner cooked up by Jason and Nora: chile. Then moved on towards journal club to finish off the night. Monday 5/3/2010 Mitchell Bay to Mitchell Bay We bunkered down in snug harbor today and didn't even bother to stick our noses out into the Strait. The small craft advisory and warnings of gusts up to 60 mph kept us away and content today. The sun was shining although the wind was blowing, and we were able to avoid all sea-sickness by avoiding everything other than our lovely harbor. We discussed various methods of taking data and send Jason out in La Gadito to pretend to be whales behaving in several manners while we took recordings.It was quite entertaining to see the dingy bouncing around in the harbor and catching enough wind to almost send Jason into the brisk water. Luckily, he made it back just in time to start dinner. Being the responsible one on board, he was sure to serve broccoli, beets, and polenta-lasagna. Oh, we did spot a harbor seal taking a few breaths and resting at the surface just a few meters from the bow. So there's the reported science from the day. Other than that, we worked on papers and read several scientific articles between the five of us. I think that if you combined all of the knowledge that our brains host, you could form a small acoustic and marine mammal behavioral library. Tuesday 5/4/2010 Mitchell Bay to Reid Harbor Finally the winds died down enough for us to venture forth into Haro Strait again to look for whales and conduct other research. We enjoyed some breezes in the morning and rode the flood time up to Turn Point on Stuart Island where we positioned ourselves to watch and listen for killer whales. Val came aboard this morning in Snug Harbor which allowed us to have mentor meetings with both Val and Jason and all the students to iron out some more of the wrinkles in research methods. Science always makes its best progress when multiple minds focus on a problem and discuss the matter at hand. During the day we were graced with sightings of a number of porpoises, including two different sightings of around 3 Dall's porpoise in the area of Turn Point. This was a real treat as we have not seen many in these waters during the last several years. After a wonderful dinner at the dock in Reid Harbor we revisited our calibration exercise to make sure we all understood the process and decide which the most appropriate calibration factors to use were. Nothing like an invigorating discussion of logarithmic decibel scales around the lounge of the Gato Verde to end off the day. Wednesday 5/5/2010 Reid Harbor to Snug Harbor THe weather today started out cold but became very nice. We tried to pump out at the barge in Reid Harbor but it wasnt working so we decided to go to Roche Harbor instead. Before we left Jason got on the dingy adn fed the plug end of the single hydrophone up through the drain for the recycling area so we have an easy deployment of a hydrophone. At Roche We pumped put, filled the propane tank and bought milk adn then were on our way. We drifted down the west side of San Juan Island till about 4:00 when we turned around so we sould make it back to Snug in a reasonable time. While we were drifting we decided to retry the lightbulb implosion experiment and had much more sucess this time. There were no waves or dodging ships. The 100m test went of beautifuly. The imploding light bulbs made a great sound, kind of like a gunshot. The first snag came on the next test at 200m. The recorders heard 6 sounds and stoped the recording but two of the sounds were taps where the smasher got stuck on the lightbulbs and shortly after stoping the recording we heard a great implosion. THe next test was another at 200m and this one set teh tone for the rest. It didnt ho as well but good data came from it. All three tests at 400m had problems, but between the three there was usable data. After we pulled up we headed back to Snug Harbor for the night. Thursday 5/6/2010 Mitchell Bay to Westcott Bay The beautiful sun was shining and the tides were cooperative today for a lovely day on the water. Unfortunately, the whales did not agree and stayed away from the Strait (and everywhere in the Northern inland waters) again today. I am crossing my fingers that they make an exciting appearance tomorrow morning directly off our bow sprit. Other animals seemed to enjoy the day, and we were able to watch a number of porpoises play in turbulant waters just off Turn point, some harbor seals napping at high tide on a reef too flooded to be relaxing, and various birds surrounding us all day. We watched cormorants eat skinny silver fish (and thought in awe of the research that gathers data on the species that a bird eats) and seagulls noisely chase each other down while the rhinocerous oclets were focused on diving to the depths. The group had great discussions about the complicated methods in behavioral science and hashed out details for when the whales arrive. With our hearts full of laughter and sunshine, we set off to Wescott Bay to watch the harbor seals play and listen to the orchestra of birds just off our bow. And of course, to fill up on fried rice. Friday 5/7/2010 Westcott Bay to Friday Harbor Labs The sun continued to shine upon us this morning and the waters were magically calm. It was calm enough for any of us to take a soothing nap upon the trampouline net of the Gato Verde. Exactly what I did in the afternoon! Anyways, we finished our CRT hydrophone calibration in the morning and departed from Westcott Bay for a whip around the north side of Stuart Island in search for whales. On the way, we saw a couple of Dall's porpoises, harbour seals, and a bunch of floating debris. And then, it was about 2 in the afternoon, when we received a text telling us that Transients have been spotted northbound in San Juan channel. We immediately embarked towards Flattop, in hopes to cross their travel path. As we were traveling and making our way down towards the Transients, we peered out with binoculars to find several boats congregated in one area. The whales must be there! By the time we met up with the rest of the whale watching fleet, we dropped the hydrophone array and snapped away on the camera. It was nice to see the Transients once again. And what was most fascinating was that we recorded a call! It will be very interesting to analyze it and see what results we can pull from this encounter. I have to say, it was an excellent afternoon, topped off with the sun, calm waters, and satisfaction of pullling through on our final research proposals. We docked back in Friday Harbor Labs, where we will be attending the FHL open house to tell others of BEAM REACH. Saturday 5/8/2010 Friday Harbor Labs to Friday Harbor Labs (also some of us went to Victoria) Today half of us stayed at Friday Harbor Labs to take part in the Open House and the other half went to Sidney and Victoria, British Columbia to join in a 'migration' to raise awareness about the impacts of fish farming. I'm sure there will be a blog about that so look to it for more details. Those of us who stayed behind had a great sunny day at the dock where we joined the rest of the Friday Harbor Labs community in hosting the public for the day to introduce them to the great courses and research that ocurrs at FHL. We had many visitors on the Gato Verde and made a lot of new friends. Sunday 5/9/2010 Friday Harbor Labs to Snug Harbor Another glorious day with sun and some wind. We departed the labs and headed south out of Cattle Pass and rounded up the West Side of San Juan Island. As we passed Lime Kiln we stopped to try another attempt at finding the South hydrophone array with the Splashcam. We were doubly lucky this time. We didn't wrap the cable around the boat's prop (we have learned to deploy it off the bow, far away from the props). We also found the array itself!. The array has not been working since last winter, so we have been trying to figure out what is wrong with it, without having to do a scuba dive. On the first pass by we managed to catch a glimpse of the cable, and then on the second pass, we followed the cable and found the array. What a sight to behold. It looked like a trailer park after a huricane! But now at least we know that this will mostly be a recovery dive. After Lime Kiln we headed up to Snug to pick up our two students that wandered over to Canada yesterday. From there we headed straight out to catch up with two transients near Kelp Reef. We managed to record them for just over an hour and practice our data collection. Unfortunately we didn't hear any vocalizations. After the transients we headed back into Snug fo for the night. Monday 5/10/2010 Snug Harbor to Mackaye Harbor It was rainy this morning but it stopped by the time we left Snug. We decided to sail over to Discoverey Ilsand to, hopefully, catch the Residents comming back into the Inland waters. We heard a that the Transients that were spoted yesterday were spotted by otter point. On our way to Discoverey Island we saw a sea lion that was feeding. It looked like it was ripping ghuncks off of something big but though we tried to find what it was eating, we never did. We never saw any Orca or Minkeys, which were said to be in the area. We decided to anchor in Mackaye so we can head back out to Discovery Island tomorrow. Tuesday 5/11/2010 Mackaye Harbor to Parks Bay Since today was our last full day on the water before our 4-day break at the labs, we set out early to look for the whales. I (Kathryn) decided to take the first watch, and while scanning the horizon, I spotted a Minke whale that had come up just a couple hundred meters off our port beam. It was moving quickly, so we only saw it surface a couple times, but it was still exciting -- our first baleen whale! On our way into Parks Bay, Todd took us by Whale Rocks to look for Steller sea lions. We found a group of about 10 animals, but our boat spooked them and they all slid into the water as we rode by. All in all a lovely, sunny day, but still no sign of the Southern Residents... Sunday 5/16/2010 Friday Harbor Labs to Prevost Harbor Today we departed FHL and decided to head out to Prevost Harbor to spend the night. On the way we saw a few harbor porpoises. We saw a bald eagle near the light house on Turn Point.Not much science today. Monday 5/17/2010 Prevost Harbor to Snug Harbor Still no Southern residents, but we did see an interesting wet suit and flipper-clad creature in Haro Strait today! Jason swam three miles along the West side with the goal of contextualizing NOAA's proposed vessel regulations, which, if put into practice, will impose restrictions on boats when whales are present. As our "whale," Jason swam to show what Haro Strait is like from an orca's point of view. While he was in the water we took photos, videos, and sound recordings, which we will organize and display on a website in an effort to demonstrate why NOAA's proposed regulations would be beneficial for the whales. After Jason's exciting dip in the deep blue, we saw a variety of marine mammals, including porpoises (harbors and Dall's) and a Steller sea lion. Tuesday 5/18/2010 Snug Harbor to Race Rocks to Snug Harbor By now, everyone on the Gato Verde has that humongous question mark in front of their faces: Where are the Southern Residents? As our time on the boat slowly flies by, we start to analyze some data that we could possibly use for our projects. The morning was filled with scavenging old data and browsing through files to see if they can be of use. It has not rained for a while, but it did today throughout noontime, while we were enjoying delicious sandwiches prepared by Libby. It was the first time we went out to Race Rocks and although it was nothing but some sea lions, it was an exciting adventure knowing the distance we traveled to get there. It was only a short stay. We travelled right back towards San Juan Island, where we saw some harbor porpoises on the way. Sunny on the way back, nice change! We all got the wonderful delight of wearing just our T shirts, while soaking in that Vitamin D. Anchored at Snug Harbor, we finished off some of Jason's delightful polenta pasta and our last journal club article as well. Wednesday 5/19/2010 Mitchell Bay to Garrison Bay Whoa! What crazy weather we have had today! It all started with droplets on the hatch, then cleared up and allowed us to sail our way through the blustery Straight for most of the early afternoon. Grilled cheese sandwiches (yay!) topped off the early-afternoon, while we rode the waves and blasted through the water. The trampolene was full of water several times, and I'm pretty sure the galley had the ability to see fish through the window at some point. (Please note, Horace was attempting to sign up for college classes at this time...which made for a poor sick college kid).It also made for wet front births, which is slightly unfortunate. The winds and rain then picked up enough that we tucked into the bay as far as we could and are hoping our captain gets some sleep tonight. The anchor keeps jerking us around and the winds keep hallowing, so we'll see if anyone gets any sleep. We'll have a chipper breakfast! Val gave a wonderful talk on tidal exchange and we are all working hard to sift through our own datasets. Oh, and brownies to top off the night. Thursday 5/20/2010 Garrison Bay to Griffin Bay For destination choice, we decided to follow the aliteration rule...find another anchorage starting with the same letter. Last night in Garrison was a windy one. We had gusts while we were at anchor of over 30 knots. Every time a gust hit the whole boat would give a mighty tug on the anchor which resolutely held fast and jerked us back into place. The morning broke with lighter breezes which allowed us to pump out and refill our water at Roche before heading out into Haro Strait. We enjoyed steady breezes of 20 knots from the SE in the morning while we mad our way down island under sail. We kept watch for whales and made progress on analyzing data from previous years. Yes, it's true. Another day without residents. Transients were spotted up in Active Pass today, but beyond our reach. In the afternoon we made our way through Cattle Pass and into Griffin Bay for the evening. Friday 5/21/2010 Griffen Bay to Snug Harbor We started the day with some sailing. At about 1:00 we decided to look for the VEMCO fish sensor. We went to the rock Jason thought he put the retreival rope over and searched for it to no avail. One of our party sustained barnical inflicted injuries. After that we joined with the mothership once again. The dingy crew, minus the injured party, motored at different speeds and distnces from the GV so we could get recordings of a motor underwater for our group project. On our way to Snug we saw about 10 porpoises, though the crew couldnt decide on Dall's or Harbor. THen we saw four harbor seals hauled out. Saturday 5/22/2010 Snug Harbor to Friday Harbor Labs We spent a large portion of today docked at the labs, where we re-provisioned, did laundry, and took showers. On our ride over from Snug we spotted some Dall's and Harbor Porpoises, but there were no whales to be found. Nora, however, had a very exciting experience -- while at Lime Kiln analyzing data for her project, she saw a female humpback and calf a mere 20 feet from shore! This evening, we went to the Whale Museum's 4th annual "Greeting Ceremony," which is their biggest fundraising event of the year. We ate tasty lasagna and salad as we listened to Val's presentation and then proceeded to purchase (and eat) two delicious cakes during the dessert auction. We plan to get an early start in the morning so we can maximize our whale-searching time...wish us luck! Sunday 5/23/2010 Friday Harbor Labs to Snug Harbor We left early from the labs in the morning to pump out at Friday Harbor. It was then that we got the text message that there were transient orcas coming in from the Straits of Juan de Fuca. We headed out towards Discovery Island in the hopes of spotting them. We hung out there during noon, but we missed them. After that, we rounded up north in Haro Strait to anchor at Snug for the night. The residents still has not come back from such a long absence. We have one last sea week out to find them. Hopefully we can collect some data on them for a day or two. We spotted some harbor porpoises and a harbor seal. Majority of the day was spent dissecting data in the galley of the Gato Verde after burritos and a game of Uno. Monday 5/24/2010 Mitchell Bay to Prevost Harbor Today was devoted to anything science. We have several projects that have been building, so with no reports of whales within our reach, we stayed close to home for the early part of the day. This means that Val was available for consults and the internet was helpful. The sun was tempting us out onto the water, so we set the sail for a brief trip to Prevost. After dinner Jason shared tricks of the trade for getting what you want out of life, how to make multi-colored cuscous, and how to do cool research in South Africa. We are entering the time period during traveling that I like to call "ETMG" meaning each-thing-must-go (as dubbed by one of my college friends). There is a certain amount of food left, so the last week is pretty creative in usage and quantities. Often during ETMG you have to make sacrifices like eating an entire can of black olives, or using water for your cereal instead of milk. We have rationed pretty well, but I am still looking forward to the creative nature of ETMG eating situations. I am also wishing that I could analyze calls while I slept so that I wouldn't lose so much time for work. Prevost feels like a comfortable, familiar dock, and I am starting to know my way to the land head by using just the moonlight. Unfortunately, the moon is dim, so I end up tripping on roots more regularly. Tuesday 5/25/2010 Prevost Harbor to Mitchell Bay We left the dock this morning to head south and then headed for Roche to pump out. Just before we got there we received reports of killer whales that were said to be transients down at Eagle Cove. We decided to pump out and then head down to see if we could get some recordings and behavior observations. After we left word starting coming in that they were perhaps not Transients at all, but rather Residents. We caught up to them in the Pile Point area and it turned out to be L-pod! We finally recorded some audio and behavior data on Southern Residents from the Gato Verde this Spring! Wahooo. The first hour or so they were travelin slowling, northbound, but then they turned around and eventually clustered up and started resting and moved off shore. We managed to get over 2 hours of recordings. We finally left them and headed back to Snug Harbor to anchor and join up with Val and Dominic Tollit who is coming aboard for a couple of days with us. Not a bad day at all. Wed 5/26/2010 Mitchell Bay to Mitchell Bay We decided to head out and hope the whales would come in by way of the strait of Juan de Fuca. We drifted down for a while and at about 1:00 we heard that L and J pods were sighted at Otter Point. They werent really moving more than 4 knots an hour at most so we realized that they wouldnt be where we were until well after we had left to return to anchor. We turned around at about 5 adn headed back up to Mitchell Bay. We listened to the Lime Kiln hydrophone till about 12:40 and didnt hear anything. 5/27/2010 Mitchell Bay to Roche Harbor Scott came aboard today with some exciting news -- late last night, he heard a cacophony of sound coming from the Lime Kiln hydrophpone. The residents are back in town! We searched for the whales this morning without much luck, but Jeanne called us early in the afternoon to tell us she heard faint calls on the LK hydrophone again. We started streaming the hydrophone recording as we motored toward the lighthouse and heard lots of vocal activity, which was very encouraging. We finally joined up with the whales around 1 pm and stayed with them until 4:30 pm. They were quite spread out and we had some trouble keeping up with them, but it was wonderful to atleast spend some time with the whales before our program ends! 5/28/2010 Roche Harbor to Mackaye Harbor We left Roche Harbor today before we had our meeting to take advantage of the ebbing of the tides. Boy, was it rough out there. Gato Verde and its passengers were rocking back and forth the whole time, as we enjoyed Dom's talk in the morning while waiting for updates on the whales. The whales were reported to be off Iceberg pt. at Lopez Island. Upon hearing that, we motored down there and soon enough, our first encounter with J pod where we got recordings. J1 was stood out as the big male of the group, as we saw several females as well, J2 probably being one of them. What made this encounter memorable was the fact that we were not surrounded by ten whale watching vessels. The whales were traveling very slowly, perhaps foraging, because we could hear lots of clicking in the speakers. Anxious to get a closer look, everyone bustled around, shouting the positions of the whales. We saw mostly breaches, but what was most remarkable was a young juvenile spyhopping less than 100 meters off of starboard. To top that off, one whale approached us from the side and surfaced a couple of times on our starboard. The girls just could not stop squealing with delight, as I yelped in shock at how close they got to us. Less than 10 feet away, we were immediately taken away by their majestic prescence. We followed them for about an hour, until we lost them as they swam up Haro Strait. We then anchored in Mackaye for the night, and continued our analysis for the day. Sphaghetti without much sauce!