Tag Archives: transient

August 20 – Two Pods of Transient Orcas!

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Wind: W at the beginning and end of day, NE mid morning to early afternoon, 4-18 knots
Sea State: calm
Visibility: 0-10 NM
Sky: fog in morning, clear in the middle of the day, overcast in afternoon, rain in evening
Temperature: 12-17 °C
Atmospheric CO2: 412.15 ppm (recorded by NOAA at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii)

There was a lot marine mammal activity today. At 11:00, two pods of Bigg’s transient killer whales were in the ecological reserve. One pod appeared to have about six whales. The other pod appeared to have three. Both pods spent a lot of time around the South Islands. A nearby whale watching boat captain mentioned on the VHF radio that the orcas were two families most likely having some social time. They were probably having a good meal too. I didn’t see any hunting happening on the surface. Transients eat marine mammals like seals. I did see a lot of harbour seals not taking any chances, huddled together on nearby rocks and around the east bay beach, looking towards the areas where the orcas were swimming. The transients stayed around until at least 3:30.

See the photos below for views of the orcas and other sights from today:

Elephant Seal Pup Posse and Orcas

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Wind: yesterday 2-7 knots from NW to SE, today 0-15 knots from N to E
Sea State: both days calm
Visibility: both days 15 NM
Sky: both days clear
Temperature: both days 3-7 °C
Atmospheric CO2: 414.30 ppm (recorded by NOAA at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii)

The wind has been relatively calm over the past two days. Along with clear skies, it’s been very delightful here. This morning, the three elephant seal pups began hanging out all together for the first time. I saw their slide marks coming from different directions across the frosty grass towards the bushes in the middle of the island.

This morning at 8:45, I was at the kitchen sink doing dishes and looking out the window, I spotted a pod of orcas splashing just south of the island. When I went out to get a closer look, it appeared the pod of five to seven orcas were hunting a harbour seal or sea lion. The orcas were swimming in circles and splashing around. A few sea lions were looking on from nearby shallower water. The orcas are most likely transient or bigg’s, which hunt marine mammals.

Five visitors from Pearson College were on the island today to remove 16 old batteries and three empty diesel drums. They each weigh 250 lbs, so two trips were made to keep the boat seaworthy. Thanks for the great work Corey, Giovanny, Greg, Jake and Lawrence.

Other than the Pearson boat, there were four boats in the ecological reserve over the past two days. Yesterday, three tour boats stopped by for a look. Today one pleasure craft went through Middle Channel.

See the photos of some views from the past two days:

A short video of the orca pod just south of the island today. I was standing by the surge channel near the Science House. The bird that flies across the frame is a juvenile bald eagle. You can see the sea lions on the left side looking on. The orcas might be hunting a sea lions or seals. I will provide an update if the pod is identified.

Busy Week

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Weather

  • Visibility: 0-15 Miles
  • Wind: 0-15 NE
  • Sky: Partly cloudy
  • Water: Calm to choppy, under a metre

Boats/Visitors

  • the past week was CAS week at the college so I had two groups of students drop by, the first group were marine scientists that came for 5 days and helped out with cleaning up garbage, collecting driftwood, doing a daily census and stuff like that
  • the second group were divers that unfortunately did not get to dive while they were here but have been diving around race rocks before, they stayed for two nights

Maintenance

  • What a week, the fence had to be repaired quite a bit, the students helped me with it one day, and I did not properly show them how to repair the fence so the wire ended up being grounded which the sea lions took full advantage of and completely messed up the fence
  • The electric pump in the crane house is working but is kind of slow going, it also takes a lot of priming
  • the fire pump is out of commission at the moment, there were a lot fo issues with it probably due to the fact it is not a saltwater pump and has been sitting by the ocean for 3 years
  • the desalinator is not cooperating either, it will work for maybe an hour before it shuts itself off, I can restart it but again it will only run for another hour and only desalinates half the water it used to in the same amount of time

Ecological

  • I personally have seen about 8 humpback whales a day for the past week
  • there was also a pod of about 6 killerhwhales that one of the students saw from the lighthouse which we found out later were transients and were actually hunting sea lions
  • There have also been some interesting birds around, there was a robin here, which I don’t typically see and there was also a snow goose, which I personally have never seen here before, its been hanging out with the Canada geese other birds include oyster catchers, killdeer, ravens, and eagles
  • the neck banded sea lions seem to come and go, they are very difficult to keep track of, I believe there are two at the moment and I see them about once a week, since there are over 1000 sea lions at the moment they easily get lost in the crowd, even the group of students I had here only saw them once

Social organization of mammal-eating killer whales: group stability and dispersal patterns

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by Robin W. Baird and Hal Whitehead
See the full PDF:KWSocOrg
Abstract
: The social organization of mammal-eating “transient” killer whales (Orcinus orca) was studied off southern Vancouver Island from 1985 through 1996. Strong and long-term associations exist between individual transients, so sets of individuals with consistently high association levels, termed pods, can be delineated. Pods consist of individuals of mixed ages and sexes, and typically contain an adult female and one or two offspring (averaging 2.4 individuals). The mother–offspring bond remains strong into adulthood for some male (and less often for female) offspring. Other males disperse from their maternal pod and appear to become “roving” males, spending some of their time alone, and occasionally associating with groups that contain potentially reproductive females. These males appear to have no strong or long-term relationships with any individuals, and adult male – adult male associations occur significantly less often than expected by chance. Females that disperse from their natal pod appear to be gregarious (having high average association rates) but socially mobile (having low maximum association rates). Differences in social organization from the sympatric fish-eating “resident” killer whales (where no dispersal of either sex occurs) likely relate to differences in foraging ecology. Transient killer whales maximize per capita energy intake by foraging in groups of three individuals,whereas no such relationship has been documented for resident killer whales