New SRKW Calf, Humpback Whales, Orca and One Dolphin

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Another calf for J-Pod boosts the Southern Resident Orca population! This makes eight calves in 2015. What wonderful news for these endangered whales. We’ve had a few Transient Bigg’s Killer Whales pass through, as well as a few Unidentified Orca, but mostly in the Northern parts of the Georgia Strait, we still have Humpback Whales, and feel that they will most likely stay the duration of winter. Although we did not have any reports of Pacific White Sided Dolphins transiting the area, we did have one deceased, likely from old age, wash ashore in Powell River.

We would like to wish you and yours all the very best of the Holidays and a Happy New Year! A reminder also that we continue to monitor, track and post sightings information all year round, so keep the reports coming.
Susan MacKay, Wild Ocean Whale Society

Society News

Annual General Meeting
Wild Ocean Whale Society’s Annual General Meeting is scheduled for January 19, 2016 in Powell River. Please Contact us if you wish to participate or have any general queries.

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13:54 • 7 Bigg`s Orca hunting, off the lookout at Van Anda Cove, Texada Island, Malaspina Strait. I saw that family of seven from the look out in VanAnda and followed them past Erickson to the pier. That is where I saw them tustle with something and the water went pink and red like in the splash. ▫ Observed from Shore

15:30 • 3 Humpback Whale playing, meandering between Harwood Island to Vivian Island and back in Georgia Strait. They wound up back closer to Harwood Island after heading out to pick up a number of sea lions to play with. Still playing when left . ▫ Leaving the Scene

12:02 • 3 Humpback Whale between Rebecca Rock and Powell River, Algerine Passage. ▫ On Scene

09:22 • 2 Humpback Whale in front of the sandbanks of Harwood Island, Powell River side Malaspina Strait. ▫ Second Hand

15:40 • 5 Humpback Whale breaching, off Rebecca Rock, Powell River in Strait of Georgia. ?BCX0380, Zed? Three Humpbacks headed towards Vancouver Island and two headed towards Texada Island. Not sure yet who the other Humpbacks were. ▫ Leaving the Scene

15:00 • 1 PWS Dolphins on the beach off Powell River, Malaspina Strait. Dead Dolphin washed ashore and was reported. Based on the size of the animal, the way the teeth are worn and no signs of predation, it appears this Dolphin died of old age. I assisted Fisheries load the animal so that a necropsy could be performed at a later time. We have not received any sightings reports of Pacific White Sided Dolphins in the area for quite some time, but it is possible the animal washed ashore in the night.

After years of population decline, the population of Southern Resident killer whales is on the rise this year with the Birth of J54 to J28, a 22-year-old female which is also the mother of a female born in 2009, named J46, which still survives.

A species of dolphin that’s never been seen alive in B.C. before has been spotted flourishing off the coast of Vancouver Island.
Two pods of short-beaked common dolphins were seen just outside the Juan de Fuca strait in September.

More whales spotted in the Georgia Strait this year. It has been an outstanding year for humpback sightings, according to local watchers, with many of the ocean-going mammals spotted from shore or BC Ferries….

Terry Brown’s Welcoming Whales project includes an exciting video from this Summer of Humpback whales breaching in Jervis Inlet, near Saltery Bay, on the Sunshine Coast south of Powell River. “….They were far away when breaching, about a kilometre, hence the sound reaches us about 4 seconds after the visual! I’ve kept this timing to give a sense of what it’s like to be there. Still exciting!”
We look forward to sharing more of Terry’s videos here in the future, or click our Read the Article link to see more Welcoming Whale project videos, as well as other sea-life on The Amphibiographer site.

Researchers from the University of Washington (UW) teamed up with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to examine how much noise produced by individual boats actually reaches whales in the inland waters of Washington and the British Columbia – areas that are home to an increasing number of ferries, whale watching cruises, fishing boats and shipping vessels……

Extraordinary images conjured from a dolphin’s sonar have revealed how the creature “sees” a human swimmer using echolocation.
Scientists produced the blurred outlines of a submerged man after recording the sonar signals with an underwater microphone and converting them into pictures.
Sophisticated processing was used to transcribe the way sound waves imprint themselves on water and create the images.

Humpback whales with albinism are extremely rare, so it was a real treat when one appeared off the coast of Australia this week.

Fun fact: many whales’ blowholes are actually two v-shaped bilateral holes, which is much easier to see on a white whale (at about 22 seconds into this video)

Frighteningly effective hunting methods have become something of a speciality for a pod of killer whales off the coast of Patagonia, Argentina.
The pod has been seen tricking dolphins into an ambush. Orcas have been filmed hunting dolphins before, but never using such a complex group-hunting technique.

Underwater mountains are key stopovers in the migratory routes of an endangered population of humpback whales in the South Pacific, new research shows.

European eels are critically endangered. To better understand their lives, researchers tracked them during a migration. Suddenly, three trackers returned very strange data. What, oh what, could have happened?

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