J Pod

The Wild Orca team departed Snug Harbor at 11:45am to meet up with J Pod members. We received word about the whales around 9:30am from the Center for Whale Research who were on their way out to take census ID photos, so we delayed our departure time a by 90 minutes to give them access to the whales in a collaborative effort to reduce the amount of vessels on scene with the endangered Southern Resident killer whales.

We encountered whales at 12 noon and they led us up Haro Strait and into Boundary Pass on the Canadian side of the border. We collected a very small fecal sample around 4 o’clock near Java Rocks. The sample was a very small wispy and diffused that took a lot of searching to be sure we found each wispy piece.