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Salmon Eating Killer Whales

Today we were viewing J Pod, who eat salmon.

The prior two days I took my guests on long trips to see mammal-eating killer whales. Thursday’s tour we were down at the Olympic Peninsula watching the T30’s. Friday we were in Canada all the to the top of Salt Spring Island with the T18’s. On the way back to Friday Harbor we saw another pod of five whales that turned out to be the T124’s.

Today we were with J Pod, one of the three pods known as the SRKW’s. We were also in Canada today but just across the border in Haro Strait and Boundary Pass.

I have pics of J27 Blackberry, L87 Onyx, J47 Notch, J39 Mako, J22 Oreo and her son J38 Cookie who is in that “sprouter” stage growing his tall dorsal fin like a teenage boy. The last whale I captured with the lens was J26 Mike.

Others in the distance were too far away so that we did not get photos of them. They were spread wide over several miles. J Pod is known as salmon eating killer whales and has not been around much over the last few years due to the declining salmon numbers.

Most Ships Pilots are Considerate of the Whales; Some are Not.

I called the pilot of an outbound containership on VTS 11 notifying him that he had J Pod whales in front of him, and on both sides for a couple of miles. Most pilots are considerate and will slow the ship down to an agreed upon 10 knots that helps the whales be able to echolocate their prey without being drowned out by the noise of the ship’s propeller. This pilot did not. Instead, he maintained 16 knots and faster. Vessel Traffic was notifying ships of the whales in the area.

A SeaSpan Tug and Barge came a bit later, but his speed is much slower. The barge you see in the photo is a self-dumping log barge.

Leaving the killer whales behind, we made our way back to Friday Harbor. On the return trip, we saw some of the exotic animals on Spieden Island.

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