Susan Berta of Orca Network shot some nice video of J pod, one of our three resident pods, about 50 feet off Whidbey Island’s Bush Point Lighthouse on Saturday. (Click on video player.)
The orcas haven’t been spending as much time in Puget Sound this year as usual, and nobody is sure why. As of last week, lower-than-usual numbers of chum salmon were reported in local streams — but that doesn’t mean the salmon are not somewhere in Puget Sound. It’s kind of a waiting game at this point, and I plan to write a story updating the salmon picture in the next day or two.
On Saturday, orcas were first reported heading south between Whidbey and Marrowstone islands about 1 p.m., according to several reports made to Orca Network. They seemed to linger at Bush Point.
During the night, they must have headed farther south along the Kitsap Peninsula, because about 8 a.m. Sunday they were headed back north past Point No Point near the tip of the peninsula. Then they rounded the point and stayed awhile off Hansville’s Foulweather Bluff, according to one resident.
By Sunday afternoon, they were slowly heading back toward Point No Point, which they reached late in the day, still traveling south. Not surprisingly, nightly reports are few and far between, and the whales often pop up somewhere else the next day.
No confirmed sightings were reported until yesterday afternoon, when J and K pod, along with L-87, were spotted off the south end of Vancouver Island. They were widely spread out and heading west out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, according to observers.
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