Sunday, January 18, 2015

1-15-15 Who Exactly Was Out There?

Thursday, January 15th
...it seemed like it had been forever since...
...a whale! wow!...then another and another...I could tell they were Ts from their behavior...they were taking something to eat!  When they are at that corner and then go out of view...down island? or just eating?  
I chose down island - wrong!
...off to County Park...by now it had been 45 minutes since I had last seen them...but luckily the seas were calmer to the north than at Lime Kiln and I spotted a tall dorsal fin just as it was going down...they were north of County Park at least a mile offshore...
...I kept track of them, watching what looked like them making another kill, until I left to get on the boat with Dave Ellifrit of the Center for Whale Research...it was the T60s and T2B who travels with them...you can link to the Center for Whale Research encounters page for Dave's write up on the trip.
...back on December 4th I was out on Maya's Westside Charters and we saw the T60s...I never did post about it...it was the day that Rhapsody had died and things just got topsy-turvy.
...These images are from 12-4-14 and NOT from 1-15-15...

...when I saw T60 today while on CWR boat, she still had lots of pink in some of the gouges on her spinal ridge.  I was surprised to see that...thought they would have healed more over the last several weeks...

...I had been recording over Lime Kiln hydrophones...having seen the locations of these whales and having a time stamp on what images I did get from shore, I checked when I got home to see if they had been 'talking'.  I didn't expect to find anything and was surprised that I did.  I assumed it was the T60s and T2B who were doing the 'talking' but didn't take the time to listen just then.
...Now just who was it who was there?  These calls sound more like Residents than Transients...note: these were recorded over 1 1/2 hours so the calls are separated with a slight pause on this clip.

...I didn't hear any of the low tone sounds that I normally associate with Transients...you can hear them on my blog post of 4-5-14, they sound very different...

...did we have have some Residents in the distance and not know it?
or
...are these just what the T60s and T2B sound like?

Don't know the answer to that just yet...

note added 1-19-15:  Residents, sounded like K pod whales, but where out there were they? !

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