Sightings Report: K Pod - September 14th
Date: Tuesday, September 14th, 2021
Location: West side of San Juan Island, Lime Kiln State Park to Hannah Heights
Weather: Cloudy with periodic rain showers, 55 degrees Farenheight with 3mph winds
Tide: Ebb
Pods/Matrilines: K Pod and L-87
Total Whale Count: Estimated 17 (assuming all of K Pod was present along with L-87, unable to count due to animals being spread out)
Behaviors: Foraging
With an unusually long absence of Southern Resident killer whales over the course of the summer, it was a special experience to be able to see K Pod. We started the day sailing out of Anacortes in some cool drizzly weather. We headed southwest out of Anacortes traveling along the south end of Lopez Island. We stopped for a short period of time to watch an actively foraging minke whale and got some good looks before making our way north up the west side of San Juan Island.
As we began to arrive around the Lime Kiln lighthouse we got our first looks at K Pod. K Pod is one of the three pods that make up the critically endangered Southern Resident killer whale population. K Pod is the smallest of the pod and as of this post only has 16 members. We observed K Pod spread out and foraging, many closer to the shoreline of San Juan Island between Lime Kiln and Land Bank. There were a few individuals (K-20, K-34, and K-26) that were further from the shore and more mid-channel. The naturalist on board our vessel also got an ID of L-87 who was traveling with K Pod.
During our encounter, we watched several of the individuals successfully hunting fish, in one of our video shots you can see an unidentified male close to shore lift his head out of the water with a fish in his mouth. One of the more interesting behavioral observations we saw was K-34 “Cali” a 20 year old male repeatedly lift his peduncle (muscular area between dorsal fin and flukes) and his fluke high out of the water in a strange arch or hump shape followed by a body/fluke slap. This was the first time the naturalist and ourselves had observed this specific and unidentified behavior. We believe this behavior was indicative of his hunting pattern but cannot speak to why or the purpose it serves.
After the allotted viewing time of the residents, we began to slowly leave the scene but had to stop and disengage engines multiple times due K-34 and K-26 who kept repeatedly surfacing in front of our vessel. They would swim in one direction, then make a direction change (presumably hunting) and remain in too close of proximity for us to engage the vessel motors. We remained in place until they were well over 400 yards away and then were able to slowly leave the area.
During this encounter there were very few boats on the scene, two whale watch boats (Puget Sound Express on the M.V. Red Head and Outer Island Excursions on Black Fish 4), a private sailboat, and a few kayakers. Both whale watch boats remained over 400 yards in distance. There were a few occasions in which orcas approached vessels closer than the regulated 400 yard distance, in these instances boat engines were turned off for the safety of the whales and to prevent any noise disturbance. At one point our vessel (Outer Island Excursions) turned off engines and placed a hydrophone in the water to listen to the orcas and at the time no boat motors could be heard on the hydrophone. No research or enforcement vessels were present.
Please note that our videos and photos are taken with high-powered lenses that can distort distances causing whales to appear much closer than they actually are.
