Monday, September 7, 2015

Another New Baby!

The Center for Whale Research has just announced (on Facebook, so I don't have an article to link to yet) that L91Muncher was seen this morning with a newborn calf!  This makes the fifth baby born into the SRKW this year, and there is rumored to be another one due any time now in K pod...after nearly three years with no surviving babies, this is fantastic news!  Welcome, wee L122, and may you live a long, healthy life!

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Something Beautiful

Finishing my week on the boat, the last weekday run of the season for me, I was challenged to figure out how to describe the sunset. All evening as we came home, the water was pewter beneath the storm clouds except where shreds of green and blue reflected the patches in the sky where the clouds were not.  Little wisps of rainbow appeared along the eastern sky, never a whole rainbow, just these little patches where the Sun is hitting the virga in just the right way. It gave the southbound trip a surreal feeling, as though somehow we sailed inside the facets of giant crystal all around the Salish Sea.

Just naming the sunset's colors would make it sound garish: every shade of blue from periwinkle to neon electric blue was there, somewhere through gaps in the the clouds, and every shade of blue, purple and grey visible in the water.  The setting sun backlit cumulus clouds rising over the Olympic Mountains in colors I couldn't decide what to call and finally decided were the color of dahlias, the dahlias that range from orange through yellow through pink that grow in my front yard. Really the clouds were cantaloupe melon colored, but to describe them so makes them sound opaque and thick. The light was clear and lambent,the color of embers in a lively  fire: bright, clear pink-orange.  But that makes it sound warm and the weather was chill this evening, cooler than it has been for months and months.

The seasons have turned, of a certainty, although the calendar still gives us a few more weeks of official summer.  The redneck phalaropes are back on the Salish Sea, erupting in flashes of white underwings from the seaweed mats where they hide on the water as the boat approaches.  Golden big leaf maple leaves drift beneath the water surface when I tie the boat up in Friday Harbor. The Heermann's gulls are beginning to leave, while the Steller sea lions are coming back in droves; the jellyfish become scarce, and I have seen the first grebe of the season. At home, I prepare for a new off-season job and the coming school year, and find myself thinking about putting in my fall garden and hoping a few of my green tomatoes will ripen before Samhain. But mostly I appreciate the beauty of the change.  It is refreshing to end the day not covered with a sheen of sweat, not exhausted from the heat, which has been well above average and challenging for me this summer.   That is the intangible beauty of the summer-fall transition, the change in attitude that comes from the cooler air, the feeling of the change more than what it looks like, the shift in energy as the other animals and plants change behavior, location, and sometimes state in the face of the oncoming darkness.

How do you describe what cannot be seen? How can words capture and convey the feeling of standing between sea and sky, below the edge of the forest, the great vault of air and water before and above that lifts my soul  as though I could effortlessly spread wings and fly out into it,  beneath a sky more autumn than August, in the living stillness of a late afternoon devoid of mechanical human sound yet alive with the small noises of water and woods? That was Lime Kiln State Park on a recent weekday evening, a few people scattered on the shore in reverent silence, watching and waiting.  Here is where we come in hopes of the whales passing famously close to shore, so close you can make eye contact with them, because the water gets deep immediately offshore and they come in to play in the kelp there.  The park is locally known as Whale Watch Park, although it was originally established as a scenic preserve around the lighthouse and historic lime kilns; now it is a Mecca for those who wish to observe the SRKW in their natural habitat.

I had been to Lime Kiln a few times before, and one time was able to glimpse the whales in the far distance. This recent trip, I hoped, of course, for the close pass, the whales up against the rocks where I could see their eyes and feel their breath on my face. Although they do sometimes surprise us with a close pass by the boat, it is something I can never get enough of, and here, at the park , it would be on my own terms, not having to maintain my professional demeanor for the passengers.  I arrived, with my daughters, a couple hours before sunset, with the idea that we would have a picnic dinner and enjoy and evening there, and hopefully the whales would come by. We had seen them from the boat earlier in the day, to the south of the park, so it was certainly well within the realm of possibility.  We had dinner, and the girls began to explore the rocky shore, while I kept a vigilant watch toward the south, my last known position for the whales.




Miraculously for this busy stretch of Haro Strait, where the deep draft cargo ships pass between the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Georgia Strait on their way from the port of Vancouver, BC to the Pacific Ocean, there wasn't a boat in sight.  In the stillness, I heard the first blow...and there, well offshore, was a whale passing to the south.  They were far enough out, and the day warm enough, that heatwaves along the surface of the water distorted the view through my binoculars.  It sounded like there were many more whales out there than I could actually see...but hearing their breath, the distinctive PHWOOSH that I can't quite capture accurately with English phonemes, was spellbinding.  I stood transfixed, watching the distant fins I could see.  And then, out of the corner of my eye, a fin sliced the wrinkling water much closer to shore!  "Look!" I shouted to the girls. "Oh, look look look look look!" As though it was the first time I had ever seen one.  And this one, I knew!  It was L92 Crewser, and a moment later, his aunt, L90 Ballena.  They were the closest to pass by, still a few hundred yards offshore, but  clearly visible.  Others followed, and I watched raptly through my binoculars, particularly intrigued by a group of females and calves, too far to identify, who traveled in a thick knot together, as though just coasting along the current while they engaged in different social activities, pectoral slapping (we could see the slaps, then hear them a moment later as the sound traveled over the water), spyhops and logging.  I was mesmerized, entranced, enthralled.  As always.

About a week later, I found myself in the company of a transient killer whale superpod.  At least two family groups, I'm still not sure exactly who, but for the time we were with them they appeared to be resting. Killer whales don't sleep like we do; to give up their consciousness while sleeping would mean they would drown, since for them breathing is a conscious act. So, like other members of the dolphin family, they "turn off" half their brain at a time and cruise along slowly, often in a long row, synchronising their breaths so they surface and dive together.  When a group of "sleeping" killer whales comes to the surface, you see a lot of fins at once, and even if it isn't the breaching everyone hopes to see, it is a very impressive sight.

There are moments when time moves differently, seeming much faster or slower than it really is.  Being on a whale boat with people who have come from all over the world to see whales,  and you have seen them in the distance but the others haven't yet, and you're waiting for them to come back up, all eyes on the water, watching and waiting, and you don't know where or when they will appear again, five minutes can feel like forever.

This particular morning with the sleeping whales, they were diving for 5-6 minutes.  I stood on the bow, watching all around the boat and waiting, knowing they could show up anywhere although they had been moving in the same general direction for a while.  We hadn't seen them for a good six and a half minutes,  a pretty long drive even by transient standards. And then,  suddenly, immediately in front of the boat--not in a danger of being hit but so close it takes all our breath away--they rise as one, tall columns of steam rising above their backs as they exhale.  A little boy in front of me who has been asking great questions all morning suddenly cries out that the boat shouldn't be so close to the whales.  He was listening when I explained the rules earlier! I tell him he's right, they surprised us,  hear how is just turned off the engines?  And then he says, "There's  mist on my face," and I realize it's on mine too--the very breath of those whales is on my skin.  A slow building euphoria takes hold of me, as I register this way in which I have been touched by a killer whale for the first time. Incredible, and wonderful.  And we weren't even to the San Juans yet.  The day continued with close passes by L22 Spirit and L85 Mystery off San Juan Island, and some time with a pair of humpback whales in the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, who also chose to surface right next to the boat after a long dive. Beauty in the water, beyond my ability to adequately describe.