Transient orca T46D
Constance Bank
Sept. 2, 2009
Photo by
Joan Lopez
On our afternoon trip on Sep 2, we were headed southwest toward Discovery Island to check in on T18 and the T19 group when we got word of a large group of T's at Constance Bank. After a very brief stop with the first 4 transients, we elected to head further south to reduce the number of boats viewing that small group. As we neared Constance Bank, we could see lines of fins and blows appearing on the horizon in all directions. Most of our viewing was from 1/4 to 1/2 mile as it seemed there was no pattern to the movements of the lines between surfacings, and moving the boat in the direction where the whales had been last proved to be quite unproductive. After what seemed like a long wait, we finally had a group of whales close enough to ID a few of them (about 200- 300 m). The T10's were the most recognizable group at first. Although it appeared the whales were headed away from us, the next time they surfaced, they were behind our boat and moving up our starboard side. A couple of breaches were followed by some upside-down swimming, tail slaps and some general rollling around. The whales finished that breathing sequence and when they appeared again, they were at least 1/4 mile away and back to their serious selves. From a photo taken by one of our passengers, it has been determined that at least one of the whales present was a California Transient that was also seen in Alaska this summer. I have also attached another photo that I took (300 zoom and very cropped! see above photo) of a whale that is not in the catalogue and is not familiar to Dr. Lance Barrett-Lennard, whose specialty is Alaskan Transients. The photo has also been forwarded to the DFO researchers at Nanaimo*. The T's that were Id'ed later from photos were T100, T100B, T100C, T10, T10B, T10C, T63 and T46. This was just the one line that approached the boat close enough to ID. All the others were just fins and blows in the distance - beautiful! It was definitely worth the extra trip to see these top predators all grouped together.
Joan Lopez, Naturalist, Vancouver Whale Watch
*Dave Ellifrit of the Center for Whale Research has ID'd this whale as T46D - sb
