We started this morning with our first sighting of a single male 'Transient' mammal eating killer whale (Orcinus orca) T162 (DFO Transient catalogue) at around 0900. He's a cool looking male with a big nick at the bottom of his dorsal fin. Within minutes of spotting him another group of killer whales was spotted and it ended up being some of the northern Resident killer whales including the R4s and R18s. They were a few miles south of Munro Island and we had a nice sighting watching them from the ship and the FRC was launched for photo ID to be done on the group.
Then, just after dinner this evening, we had another sighting of northern Resident killer whales in Loreto Sound, at 1830, and this group included the A11s, D9s, R4s (again!) and the R31s. In total there were 4 encounters of 34 different killer whales today!
View from the bridge of the FRC on the port deck
Northern Resident killer whale tail lobbing!
Two males travelling together
CCGS Tully Helicopter deck as seen from the 'monkey's island' above the bridge
Entering data in the bridge
Abover 3 photos: view of the our evening group of Northern Resident killer whales (A11s, D9s, R4s and R31s) from the deck of the CCGS Tully
I forgot how much Northern Resident killer whales spyhop!
And then I was lucky enough to go out on the FRC for photo ID with Mark, Jared and Rod, our coast guard bosun...
And then I was lucky enough to go out on the FRC for photo ID with Mark, Jared and Rod, our coast guard bosun...
More spyhops!
Spyhop with CCGS Tully in the background
What a good looking male...nice tall, straight dorsal fin
Tail lob!
Logging (resting) whales
This guy had a nice gnarly fin! (will be looking up his ID soon)
Please note: many of these photos were taken under a DFO research permit using a Nikon D70 digital SLR camera with a 300 mm lens and have been cropped!
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