January 16, 2024: T Party | Point Robinson, Vashon Island, WA

Date: Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Location: Point Robinson, Vashon Island, Washington
Weather: Mostly sunny, 37 degrees Fahrenheit with 1mph winds from SSE
Tide: Ebb
Matrilines: T90s, T100s, T101s, T124As, T124A4s, T124Ds, T124A1, and T124C
Total Whale Count: 22
Behaviors: Traveling
Boat Count: Unknown

On the morning of the 16th, reports of a large group of 10+ orcas came through on online sightings pages. Based on the numbers, the large group was presumed to be J Pod and they were traveling south towards Seattle. I called up Shari, the Executive Director of Orca Conservancy, that J Pod was presumably headed in her direction. Based on their location and the time, we decided to meet up together to try and catch up with Js.

Ideally, we would try to hop on the Fauntleroy to Vashon Island to try and get to Point Robinson, however, we were racing the clock and the ferry schedule. We hadn’t anticipated that a Point Robinson trip would work out, but we had one of those days where the stars aligned. I happened to get mostly green lights on my drive south, there was no traffic on the freeway, and the express lanes were open, all of which shaved a solid 15 minutes off of my travel time. By the time I got to Shari, we decided we may just have enough time to make the Fauntleroy ferry and decided to go for it. Luck was on our side, and I joke that I am pretty certain we time-traveled, we made it to the ferry line as they were loading and were able to catch the last boat before the break in the schedule. Had we not made that boat, we surely would have missed any shot at a Point Robinson pass. As we were in route to the ferry, the group of orcas was on the mainland side, and I caught a few glances of dorsal fins.

After we got on the ferry we headed to the upper deck to try and scan for the orcas. By this point, photos and videos from other shore-based whale watchers revealed that this large group of orcas was not actually J Pod or even any other Southern Resident pod, but instead, it was a group of 20+ transient/Bigg’s (mammal-eating) killer whales that were all traveling together, or what many often refer to as a T Party. Later in the day the matrilines and individuals confirmed were: the T90s, T100s (minus T100E), T101s, T124As, T124A4s, T124Ds, T124A1, and T124C.

For a moment, we were a little discouraged to learn that these were transients. We had calculated our travels based on the behaviors and patterns we know of Southern Residents, who tend to be a little more leisurely in their travels and sometimes will stall out or linger in a place. Transients, on the other hand, travel very quickly from one point to another, so we became worried that despite making the ferry we wouldn’t have enough time to get ahead of the transients. This ultimately was not the case, and we were able to make it to Point Robinson a good 20 minutes before the T Party arrived.

For most of their travels, the transients remained on the mainland side, and we once again questioned our decision to travel to Vashon Island. Most of the time, when orcas pass through this area they hug tight to the shore right off the point, providing spectacular views, but it seemed like we were going to get a rare day where they stayed on the other side of the channel. We watched them for a few minutes from afar, just barely being able to see them even through binoculars. They were too far for Shari’s camera to capture, and my battery was about to die. I had left my camera bag with my spare batteries in the car, so Shari offered to go get that for me since she couldn’t get any photos. Shari set off to grab my bag and the whales vanished on a deep dive for around 7 minutes.

Once they resurfaced again they were mid-channel, and we were able to see them much more clearly. They were broken out into 2 or 3 groups, with each group surfacing tightly together. Shari was still away and I was getting anxious that she would miss the pass. The whales again went under for a deep dive, and then several minutes they surfaced immediately in front of us, appearing to have made a hard turn across the channel whilst they were underwater. The group out in front of us included the T124s, T124A4s, T124A1, and T124C, and in this group, there were a total of 3 calves. A little further out was a second group that consisted of the T100s and the T101s with three very large males. There was a third group that we did not see, I believe this group may have stuck over to the mainland side, but the T90s were also in the area.

After a few breath cycles of the two groups in front of us, Shari made it back just in the nick of time with my bag and batteries. We were able to get both photos and videos of the two groups passing off the point. After they passed the point, they continued southwest towards Commencement Bay. As they were leaving view, each group started to line up fin to fin. While watching them, a river otter kept surfacing in front of us checking out all the spectators on the beach and eating a rockfish.

We eventually left Point Robinson and decided to head down to the Tahlequah ferry. Timing was once again on our side because the groups had been down around Browns Point, and as we were in line for the ferry and then on the ferry, they crossed the ferry route giving us a couple more looks before we decided to call it a day.

-Tamara