Shortly after leaving Snug Harbor we encountered J27 by himself over 1000m behind the rest of the group, we continued on and saw the entire rest of J Pod closely grouped flank in resting behavior state. We initially collected two mucous samples soon after getting on scene with J Pod, then we collected a large fecal sample right off Turn Point lighthouse. We continued to follow J Pod who slowly traveled in resting state up into Canadian waters were we collected another mucous sample and several more fecal samples. One sample contained what appeared to be a fragment of some type of lattice fish bone. The whales then took us through Active Pass where we witnessed some fun socializing behaviors such as pec slaps, tail slaps, surface rolling, and spy hopping. We left them on the eastern entrance to active pass and  headed back towards Snug. Eba worked extremely hard making this our record for samples collected within a day for the 2022 season so far!

Research Vessel

R/V Cheena

Species

Southern Resident Killer Whales

Pods

J Pod

Research Activities

Fecal & Mucous Collection

This work is made possible in part by a grant from