Block Party

Below: Another photo from our guest Christophe Paulbert, taken from the Sea Lion this July.

It seems like every time we see orcas we have a uniquely memorable encounter. We met up with members of J and L pods and possible members from K. In fact, a guest spotted J1 in an area we were not expecting to see orcas, just outside Cattle Pass. We decided to stop and hang out with J1 and J2 as they foraged just up-island of Salmon Bank, roughly 3/4 miles off shore.

We decided to move on from J1 and J2 in favor of a larger group further up-island from them. We encountered animals we believe to be from K pod here. I think we saw K20 and her calf K38... K20 is usually quite obvious, but she was slicing straight through the water and I couldn't see her saddle. However, I did wonder who "that guy" was, and when I saw the calf I instantly guessed K20. K20 aka Spock was believed to be a male until she showed up with a calf due to her larger and straighter dorsal fin. We also saw a large group of roughly 25 animals from J and L pods. Although it appeared there were more animals there than we identified, we for sure saw most members of the J17s, J11s, J19s, J22s, J16s, J8 (basically all of J Pod), and the L43s. They were swimming tightly together, but not all surfacing in sequence, which made it easier to see who was there. They appeared to be heading in the direction of Hein Bank when we left them around 3:30PM.

Megan Young, Naturalist