Orcas, Killer Whales, Blackfish, Sea Pandas – the species scientifically labeled Orcinus orca is known by many names, and they are probably one of the most distinctive looking mammals in the sea. Although these large, intelligent, black and white dolphins look a lot different than you or me, you’d be surprised how similar we and they are… but first let’s talk about an awesome day.
It was one of the sunniest and clearest days that I’ve seen this spring as we left Friday Harbor this Sunday, April 17, 2016. You could see Mt. Baker, you could see the Olympic Mountain Range, you could even see Mt Rainier, which is more than a 100 miles away! Captain Mike and I headed north on the M/V Sea Lion to start our journey around the north side of San Juan Island and eventually back down the west side into whale country. Along the whale we made a quick stop at Spieden Island to check out the Steller’s Sea Lions growling and sleeping on shore and others rafting together in the water. They spend their winters here and will leave us soon to breed on the beaches of Alaska, so right now they are eating and sleeping and repeating to build up blubber stores because once breeding starts they will focus all their energy on that and not eat for months sometimes. After seeing a few sea lion wrestling matches we headed on a spotted Bald Eagles soaring and resting on Sentinel rocks. Here we also spotted our other pinniped friends, the Harbor Seals! These Harbor Seals are the main food source for the Transient Orcas and make around 70% of their diet! Then onward we went to the west side. Along the coast of Vancouver Island we started to see black fins in the water. Transient Orcas! These are the marine mammal eating type. They usually travel in smaller tight knit family groups but today we saw two traveling together which was a first for me! The families were the T11’s and the T46B’s. The T11’s are mostly known to hunt Minke Whales – pretty killer whales.
We watched these Transient Orcas travel super fast north through Haro Strait through deep and shallow water and soon discovered why they were swimming so quickly. A little further south in Haro Strait were the Southern Resident Orcas. We spotted part of J pod on our way southward and it was the J2’s! The transients are usually seen quickly swimming away any time they notice the Resident populations nearby. There hasn’t ever been any hostilities witnessed between the two groups, but the transients make sure to keep their distance for some reason. These two ecotypes of orcas look very similar, but behave very differently. They behave different, have differently sized family groups, and their vocalizations sound dramatically different. These are all learned behaviors that they pass down to each successive generation a little like different human cultures.
The J2’s are the most famous Southern Resident Killer Whale family, as its matriarch is J2, Granny, a 105 year old orca! Orcas have a similar life cycle ot humans, males live around 40-60 years, females live around 60-80 years. This is the first time I’ve seen this family this season! Granny (J2) was leading the group northward in Haro Strait. The rest of her family is J14, Samish and Samish’s offspring: J37, Hy’Shqa, J40, Suttles, J45, Se-Yi’-Chn, and J49, T’ilem-I’ngles. This is a multi generational family spanning 5 generations! The J2’s also have an adopted member, L87, Onyx, whose mother died when he was young and he was adopted into the J2 family group a little bit later. We were with this group for a awhile as the traveled and intermingled with each other to participate in some very important social bonding. Like humans Orcas need socialization with other orcas and especially ones in their own ecotype and family. These social connections are important for establishing bond that create stronger pods and enable them to work together for survival, and probably goofing around is fun. As we had our final views of this J pod family we said goodbye to this family and hoped that we’d get to see the other families of the Southern Residents soon! Whale folks from Captain Mike and myself I hope you have a San Juanderful day
Naturalist Erick
M/V Sea Lion
https://www.sanjuansafaris.com/
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