”Ripple” the L Pod Orca Hunting Salmon of San Juan Island
Orca whales belonging to the L pod were right on station as we started our first day of cruising. This intensely studied pod of 42 whales works the waters alongside San Juan Island where they intercept salmon returning to their natal streams through the Juan de Fuca and Haro Straits.
The orcas split into smaller sub groups to detect their salmon prey. Naturalist Larry Hobbs lowered a hydrophone so we could tune into the chatter between the foraging whales.
Their scimitar shaped dorsal fins, up to six feet tall on the older bulls, have individual marks that set each orca apart, along with a lighter saddle patch just behind the dorsal. These L pod whales have been photographed, named and placed in an identity chart which Larry shared with us.
Our prized orca sighting was the L1 bull on the identity chart. His tall waved or rippled fin sets him apart, and locally his name is “Ripple.” To top off the orca watching, Ripple did a full breach.
This pod and two others, J and K, that work these inland waters almost exclusively for salmon, are constantly conversing as contrasted with the far ranging pods that hunt marine mammals – other whales, seals, sea lions and sea otters on the outer coastline. These “killer” whales’ pods run silent when stalking or closing on their prey.
Rhinoceros auklets and tufted puffins which nest in burrows on Protection Island National Wildlife Refuge were also working the upwelling currents.
The morning’s action was just offshore from the rolling grassy slopes of San Juan National Historic Park. American troops were garrisoned here during a 13-year standoff between Great Britain and the United States over title to this sunny cluster of islands in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains.
Their neighbors were Royal British Marines at a sheltered base in Garrison Bay. The two nations were at the brink of war because a hog owned by the Hudson Bay Company tore up the potato patch of an American settler who shot the pig. The Company refused to pay for the pig.
In the Treaty of 1846 which set the 49th parallel as the boundary between the two nations the line was not defined west of the mainland. The islands were in limbo with no agreement reached in the so-called Pig War until 1873 when a third party, Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, decided in favor of the Americans.
Orca whales belonging to the L pod were right on station as we started our first day of cruising. This intensely studied pod of 42 whales works the waters alongside San Juan Island where they intercept salmon returning to their natal streams through the Juan de Fuca and Haro Straits.
The orcas split into smaller sub groups to detect their salmon prey. Naturalist Larry Hobbs lowered a hydrophone so we could tune into the chatter between the foraging whales.
Their scimitar shaped dorsal fins, up to six feet tall on the older bulls, have individual marks that set each orca apart, along with a lighter saddle patch just behind the dorsal. These L pod whales have been photographed, named and placed in an identity chart which Larry shared with us.
Our prized orca sighting was the L1 bull on the identity chart. His tall waved or rippled fin sets him apart, and locally his name is “Ripple.” To top off the orca watching, Ripple did a full breach.
This pod and two others, J and K, that work these inland waters almost exclusively for salmon, are constantly conversing as contrasted with the far ranging pods that hunt marine mammals – other whales, seals, sea lions and sea otters on the outer coastline. These “killer” whales’ pods run silent when stalking or closing on their prey.
Rhinoceros auklets and tufted puffins which nest in burrows on Protection Island National Wildlife Refuge were also working the upwelling currents.
The morning’s action was just offshore from the rolling grassy slopes of San Juan National Historic Park. American troops were garrisoned here during a 13-year standoff between Great Britain and the United States over title to this sunny cluster of islands in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains.
Their neighbors were Royal British Marines at a sheltered base in Garrison Bay. The two nations were at the brink of war because a hog owned by the Hudson Bay Company tore up the potato patch of an American settler who shot the pig. The Company refused to pay for the pig.
In the Treaty of 1846 which set the 49th parallel as the boundary between the two nations the line was not defined west of the mainland. The islands were in limbo with no agreement reached in the so-called Pig War until 1873 when a third party, Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, decided in favor of the Americans.
