When not in College, Craig's son, Lars, runs the R/V Natoa at times.

Salmon are starting to return to the Sound now, but it’s spring-like yet, with cold water temperatures, and leaves just unfurling on the shrubs and trees. The resident killer whales are still traveling in small matrilines. Some of the matrilines, however, are coming together, in contrast to what Craig and field assistant Doug van Patton saw during their wintry April cruise. The bird migrants Craig and Doug spotted then (snow geese, shorebirds, sandhill cranes) have largely moved to their summering areas, but we are still seeing a few phalaropes in the tide rips and the other day, a flock of brandt geese flew over. Several feet of snow have melted in the last month, though we still find plenty to keep our coolers chilled, and Montague Island looks very wintry, with deep snow down to the tree-line on the Montague Strait side. Brown bears are active again, their scat filled with vegetation, and the other night, a set of tracks: a large mother and a tiny cub. They leave trenches in the beach gravel, digging hopefully for something that might have washed up in a storm. The deer also paw at the wrackline in spring, feeding on kelp.

We’ve spent most of this week in Hinchinbrook Entrance, a wide, tumultuous strait through which oil tankers, freighters and cruise ships come and go. The tanker escort tug captains tell us that they often spot killer whales in the tanker lanes, and that’s been the case this month. Gradually, we’re gaining insights into the late winter/early spring habits of the residents. Probably because food is patchy, they appear to travel in much smaller groups, often just a mother and her offspring. They’re also more difficult to work with, diving for long periods of time, spending little time at the surface, appearing to search hard for salmon. During the times it’s been calm enough to drop the hydrophone, the echolocation we’ve heard has been sparse and slow, indicating that they’re searching, not honing in on nearby fish. We’ve seen matrilines of AB, AE, and AJ pods, and all of AI pod, a group of seven – basically, a pod made up of a single matriline.

Hinchinbrook Entrance is challenging in our small boat. Powerful currents and tides create intense rips and steep seas, especially when the tide and wind move in opposite directions. Off Schooner Rock, a place where we often listen and watch for whales, a massive rip of saw-toothed waves often forms, making a loud fizzy, sloshy sound. Humpacks and puffins feed there. Radio weather forecasts are unreliable because the tide, current and wind configurations act to create their own weather at the water’s surface. We timed this trip, unwittingly, during especially big tides, so every day has unfolded differently, and all we can do is head out into the Entrance and see for ourselves what the seas are like.

The following is a log of our days on the Natoa... (this part has been e-mailed to the current guardians, it will be released for all in some time)

Killer whale chasing salmon (notice the salmon above the whale's head).

24 May 2009

After driving down from Homer, we fueled up the Natoa, visited briefly with Mike Brittain, who was readying his boat Dora (which we charter in the Aleutians) to do a trip with wildlife film-maker Daniel Zatz. We headed out toward Agnes Bay, where tour boat operators had reported killer whales. Agnes is a hot spot in May, when AD5, AD16 and AK pods hunt there regularly for king salmon. We found the AK2 matriline (nine whales, including a new calf) well inside the bay. We photographed them, made a recording for Dan Olsen (who is trying to separate the different Kenai Fjords matrilines acoustically), and then anchored up for the night. (For updates on the whales of Kenai Fjords, click on the link to Dan’s new website).

25 May 2009

It was a long trip across the Gulf of Alaska to Prince William Sound, with a strong current against us. A southeasterly wind had been blowing for several days, and that slowed us down. A swell still ran from the latest storm, so it was a relief to enter the calm water of Elrington Passage, where we found our first humpback whale of the trip, X-93. The rest of the day, we moved from group to group of humpbacks in lower Knight Island Passage. The water was murky from a plankton bloom. No killer whales, but by the end of the day, we’d identified several old familiar humpbacks. We anchored in Hogan Bay, where we could collect bags of snow for our coolers and devil’s club buds for our lunch.

26 May 2009

Knowing that Hinchinbrook Entrance was a hot spot in spring, we headed north early in the morning from our anchorage in Hogan Bay. The weather was sunny, so we anticipated a day breeze in the afternoon. Just north of Green Island, we spotted dorsal fins on the horizon: five killer whales traveling south, and after photographing them and flipping through the catalogue, we recognized the Kodiak Killers, a group of Gulf of Alaska transients who are often seen hunting Steller sea lions near the town of Kodiak, hundreds of miles west, in late winter. Last summer, Cy St Amand and LA Holmes watched them attack sea otters in Cook Inlet, and they dubbed them the “Otter Flippers.” The Kodiak Killers exemplify the shifty social structure of transient killer whale groups. When we first encountered them, they were a group of six, two females with calves and a large male with a folded over fin we called Sasha. Sasha disappeared first, and then one of the females with her calf, and now Bree (AT 128) and her two calves, Vladimir (AT150), age one, and Chekov (AT 130), age six, travel with another matriline of Gulf of Alaska transients, Marina (AT143) and her calf Balode (AT 151). The five whales traveled toward Channel Island at a good clip. Channel Island is tiny but rich in marine life. Terns, eagles, oystercatchers and gulls nest there, and harbor seals haul out on the beach by the hundreds. Sea otters forage in the kelp beds. It’s flat and grassy along most of its length, but then rises dramatically in a steep tree-topped bluff, a feature that resembles a killer whale fin from a distance. We spotted the transients in very shallow water at the north end of the island, clearly on the attack, Their dorsals skimmed the water like shark fins, throwing up rooster tails. They swerved rapidly in all directions, then abruptly left the shallows and headed for deeper water. Bree shook her fin at the surface, as if she had something in her mouth, but they didn’t stop to feed and we didn’t see an oil slick, so at first assumed we’d been watching a failed attack. After traveling in a line for about a mile, the whales suddenly stopped, began milling and diving in one spot, and an oil sheen spread out around them, glossing down the choppy water. They’d carried whatever they’d killed, most likely a harbor seal, all that way to feed on it. Our colleagues in British Columbia have described killer whales packing seals under their pectoral flippers while traveling. The whales fed for about twenty minutes and then continued south as the afternoon sea breeze picked up. We lost them in the rough seas, and turned and continued north toward Hinchinbrook Entrance.

27 May 2009

We woke up in the protection of Rocky Bay, on the north end of Montague Island, and made another early start, hoping to catch the hours of calm water before the afternoon breeze. It was clear again, and we slathered on sun block and brought our ball caps and sunglasses up to the flying bride with us. It wasn’t long before we spotted blows in the Entrance and found six AEs traveling, the juveniles socializing together. We could approach them easily to take photographs, but after less than an hour, they stopped traveling, grouped tightly, and began to rest. Instantly, they began to turn away from our approaches, so we knew it was time to back off and wait for them to wake up. That happened three hours later, when they spread out, started echolocating and searching for salmon. As usual, they spent lots of time below the surface. Two hours later, they were resting again, and suddenly another matriline of AEs had joined them: the AE5s, six whales we hadn’t seen since last year. The matriarch of this group, Helen, is 45, and had her last calf in 1998, the rambunctious male Crafton (AE21), who’s now sprouting a slender dorsal fin to match his slender saddle patch. She has another son, the adult male Eddie, who’s thirty, and an adult daughter, Heather, born the year of the oil spill. Heather has two calves, Comet (AE24), age 8, and Paz (AE26), age 5. Paz is the most recent calf born to AE pod. While the females and juveniles rested, the AE males milled at the periphery of the group. It was nice to see three matrilines together, renewing their bonds. We left the whales at Cape Hinchinbrook, and spent the night in an unnamed cove in Port Etches, across the bay from Nuchek.

28 May 2009

After catching a couple Pacific cod in front of Nuchek and speaking briefly to Nick, the caretaker on the radio (he was walking the beach), we spotted dorsal fins in the distance, killer whales traveling south, very spread out. New whales: AI pod and part of AB pod, foraging for fish in the usual pattern. We went from whale to whale, photographing, matching whales to pictures in the catalogue, and taking a biopsy sample from, a twelve year-old. AI pod is a single matriline that possibly broke away from AB pod. When Craig first began the study, they almost always traveled with the AB’s, but as the years have gone by, they’ve been seen on their own more often. They share many calls with AB pod, indicating their close relation to them. All of the AI’s were there, though again, no new calf. The AI’s are distinctive for their three large males, 41 year-old Hawkins (AI2), 37 year-old Huck Finn (AI5), and 34 year-old Montague (AI6). Huck Finn, an independent, playful male, has a blunt-topped dorsal fin. It bent over as if damaged for a few years, but now the tip is folded against the fin, giving it a bulbous look from the back or front. The three brothers have a sister, Athena (AI4), 25 years old, who has three offspring, Junken, aged 13, Hobo (AI9), aged six, and Hinchinbrook (AI10), aged 3. Two matrilines of AB’s (three whales each) were mixed in with the AI’s: Galena (AB 14) and her two male offspring, Gilmore (AB24) and Sphinx (AB40). Galena, at least 54 years old, is post-reproductive, so this small matriline will eventually die out. In April, this was the only group of killer whales Craig and Doug saw in Hinchinbrook Entrance, so we were pleased to see them joined up with Kompkoff (AB22) and her two offspring, Latouche (AB49) and nine year-old Selanof (AB56). At 34 years of age, Kompkoff might still produce another calf, but it’s troubling that she hasn’t since 2000, when Selanof was born. The three matrilines foraged for five hours and then began resting, which they were still doing when we left them three hours later. A behavioral budget of these residents in late winter and early spring would look quite different from one in late summer, when so much more time is spent socializing. We’ve seen very little play behavior, even among juveniles, during this trip.

29 May 2009

Another sunny day. The tide was running strong offshore, creating a steep chop, so we hunkered in along Montague Island’s outer coastline, which isn’t normally a sheltered location. Taking advantage of the lull in whale activity, we took turns kayaking to the beach to search the huge driftwood piles for treasures. The outer coast of Montague could provide enough lumber to build a city, and enough useable gear to fill a second-hand shop: five gallon buckets, nets, lines, sneakers, gas jugs and barrels, oxygen tanks, deck brushes, shovels, and buoys. It could also fill a plastics recycling center with the number of bottles wedged among the wood or thrown up in the trees.

Back on the boat, we dropped the hydrophone and immediately heard calls. Using the directional dish, we determined that the whales were south of us, toward Seal Rocks and the Gulf of Alaska. We finally spotted killer whales in the middle of the tanker lanes, milling in small groups. The AI’s were there again, but this time with the previous day’s AE’s. Soon they spread out and began foraging. The sea was steep and lumpy, so we decided to head into sheltered water to wait for the whales to leave the tide rip.

As we approached Montague Island, just fifteen minutes after leaving the residents, we spotted three dorsal fins gliding along the shoreline, traveling north: transients, three of the endangered AT1s. Only seven of these local whales are left. The three we found were Evanof (AT2), a 40 year old female who had her last calf, the male Ewan (AT3), in 1984, long before she should have been post-reproductive. Ewan has just recently developed a fully-formed male dorsal fin. Unlike other mature AT1 males, he doesn’t roam, but has remained with his mother for 25 years. The third whale in the group was Chenega, a 35 year old female, possibly Evanof’s sister, who never had a calf. The remnant AT1’s, half of whom were lost immediately after the oil spill, may be too closely related for successful reproduction. After passing close to Schooner Rock, where a humpback whale lurked along the rocks, the whales headed offshore, diving for several minutes at a time, moving slowly northeast. In open water, it’s easy to lose AT1’s, and at times it seems like they are masters at ditching us, but what happened next was unprecedented. It had been several minutes since the last time we saw the whales, who were moving so slowly, we’d just stopped the boat ahead of them and turned off the engine, thinking they would surface not far from us. Scanning around, we noticed splashes about half a mile away, what looked like a chase. I was convinced that the AT1’s had attacked a group of Dall’s porpoises. We raced over. The three whales milled, then traveled in the opposite direction, north, rapidly. Perhaps they were carrying their prey. The group composition was exactly the same as before: a male and two female-type whales. When we came abreast of them, the setting sun now glaring directly in our faces and making it difficult to see the details of their saddle patches, I said, “From this angle, they look almost like residents.” The whales dove and surfaced shortly after, milling again. “They aren’t staying down as long as transients usually do,” Craig said. That’s when it dawned on us: these where not the AT1’s, but residents. On our next approach we saw that it was AB22 and her two offspring. We couldn’t help thinking of the AT1’s chuckling to themselves at pawning us off in this way. A few minutes later, we spotted whales in the distance, and the excited behavior of the AB22’s (and the sudden disappearance of the AT1’s, who seem to avoid resident killer whales) became apparent: a large group of very social killer whales was traveling toward us. We’d bounced from encounter to encounter to encounter. The previously serious whales: AB’s, AE’s, and AI’s, had been joined by part of the large and gregarious AJ pod, which appears (from our satellite tracking data), to spend most of its time to the east, between Hinchinbrook Entrance and Cape Saint Elias. Unlike the struggling AE’s and AB’s, the AJ’s are a pod of close to 40 members with a higher recruitment rate of new calves. They used to spend more time in Prince William Sound, but now only duck in occasionally during the summer. We often have to wait until September and October to encounter them in the southwestern Sound. The whales were highly social, in mixed groups, with males wandering from group to group to play with younger males. The adult males, penises extended, dove upside-down underneath the juveniles, and a fracas ensued. They traveled north for an hour, giving us some time to photograph with the light and the seas behind us, before they turned around. For the rest of the encounter, we bounced in the steep seas and tried to position the boat so that we weren’t photographing directly into the setting sun’s fierce glare.

30 May 2009

A quiet morning, no killer whale calls on the hydrophone, a south wind generating a lumpy sea in the Entrance. We drifted off Schooner Rock having breakfast as a family of river otters fished in the shallows. Craig scanned with binoculars and spotted distant blows and splashes. Humpbacks? Killer whales? Fin whales? Porpoises? The wind distorted the shape of the blows, but as we got closer, it was obvious they were humpbacks, a trio resting in the middle of the Strait, barely moving. We waited an hour and a half for fluke photographs, and one, with a sharply pointed dorsal fin, kept teasing us, arching high, but then flattening its fluke at the last minute. We did manage to get photographs of the other two, but couldn’t match them to any in the catalogue, so they might have been new to Prince William Sound.

There being no killer whale calls, we headed back in to shore, anchored the boat, and took a brief walk on Montague Island, calling “Hello bears,” repeatedly. Craig found a pair of deer ribs, which he tapped together to make noise. Montague has a reputation for fierce brown bears, but we didn’t see any sign of them, only abundant tracks and scats of Sitka black-tailed deer on the beach and in the woods. From a bluff top, we were able to scan the Entrance for whales. The water was flat but we only heard a humpback blowing below us, off Schooner Rock.

Back on the boat, we cruised out and dropped the hydrophone and immediately heard distant echolocation clicks and a few calls. Luckily the Entrance was calm, and we spotted killer whale fins a couple miles to the south. We were excited to see that it was the AE2 matriline, just five whales foraging for salmon, moving very slowly. Craig didn’t see that part of AE pod in the earlier trip; in fact, we didn’t see them at all last summer. There were no new calves, but no missing whales. We would have thought they were resting but for their clicks and the fact that they were spread out over a mile or so. We photographed each one, then took biopsies of Aerial (AE20) and Wing (AE25), both offspring of Nikki (AE2), who is 35 years old. Aerial is almost fully grown now, a 14 years old female who should be having her first calf soon. Wing is seven years old, and spent some time swimming on its own during the encounter, though when Nikki caught a fish, she swam over and shared it with Wing. We scooped up bits of what looked like fish liver from the kill site. We didn’t’ see any scales floating in the water. Genetic analysis of the sample will tell us the species of the fish. Aerial only briefly joined Nikki and Wing during the encounter, and spent most of the time foraging on her own, about a half mile away. The two grown males, Elias (AE2), 32 years old, and Splash (AE16), Nikki’s grown son, 20 years old (born the winter before the Exxon Valdez oil spill), foraged on their own too.

AE pod hasn’t had a new calf since Paz was born in 2004. This, and the fact that they are traveling in matrilines now, instead of as a complete pod, suggests more difficult conditions recently. The biopsy samples we’re collecting, along with the prey samples we scoop from the water, will hopefully shed more light on their feeding habits. This year we’ve been focusing on the early season, as most of what we know about the diet of Prince William Sound killer whales comes from the late summer, when silver salmon come inshore.

AB pod, which also travels in matrilines now, hasn’t had a new calf since 2003. While food could also be a problem for the AB’s, they suffer from an even greater hindrance to reproduction: many breeding and juvenile females were lost as a result of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The remaining breeding females are in their thirties, and younger whales haven’t reached maturity yet.

31 May 2009

A rainy morning gave way to clear skies, sunshine, and calm seas. We crossed Hinchinbrook Entrance toward Nuchek, on Hinchinbrook Island, once the largest Native Village in the Sound, now a cultural camp inhabited by a lone caretaker named Nick and lots of brown bears. Craig caught a halibut off Porpoise Rocks, a murre and kittiwake rookery, and then we headed northeast, along the island’s shoreline. It wasn’t long before we spotted a small group of killer whales, very spread out, slowly traveling south. It was part of AE pod, just six whales, two matrilines. One matriline consisted of Hanning (AE15), a 21 year-old male, and Petal (AE 22), a nine year-old female. Petal’s saddle patch is roseate, like her mother Rose’s was. Petal and Hanning are brother and sister. Rose, their mother, died unexpectedly in 2007. The second matriline is also motherless, with three siblings: Lethcoe (AE18), a 19 year-old male whose fin tip curls over to the left, Nowell (AE19), a maturing male born in 1993, and Patch (AE 23), a nine year-old female. Chenega Pete (AE14), their uncle, travels with them. He’s 33, and his fin tilts to the right. Oddly, all of the mature males in AE pod have leaning, wavy, or curling fins, possibly a genetic trait. After an hour or so of desultory foraging, the whales suddenly began traveling south rapidly. In the distance, we watched Petal leap free of the water. The next time we dropped the hydrophone, the whales were echolocating intensely. We also heard weak calls from another pod, but we couldn’t spot them with binoculars. We left the AEs heading out to sea past Cape Hinchinbrook, where there’s a navigational light and the remains of an old, manned lighthouse station. We’ll see tomorrow if they come back in bringing another pod with them. Their behavior today fit the pattern we’ve been observing: small groups of killer whales apparently having to work hard for every fish, much more serious than the social whales we’ll see later on this summer.

We anchored for the night back in Zaikof Bay, in a spot that will allow us to monitor the Entrance with our hydrophone all night. We ate some of the halibut Craig caught for dinner, then walked on the beach, filled our water bottles from a beautiful forest stream, listened to the evening bird songs (hermit thrushes, crows, fox sparrows, geese). It’s our last night in Hinchinbrook Entrance. Tomorrow will begin heading west, making our way over two days back to Seward. Our trip has confirmed how important this area is to our local killer whales at this time of year, suggests some strategies they may be using to survive leaner times, but also indicates that the Prince William Sound pods are struggling to make a living right now.

1-2 June 2009

Evening in Agnes Cove. We’re back where we started this research cruise. It’s 10:15 pm, and we just finished filling in data sheets, downloading tracklines, recordings and photographs, and eating dinner. The last two days provide a contrast to the previous accounts. Sometimes finding whales is a bit challenging and frustrating. We left Hinchinbrook Entrance yesterday, to make a start for our journey back to Resurrection Bay, and ultimately home. A boat radioed to report at least two killer whales off Marsha Bay, but unfortunately, we were four hours away, and by the time we reached the southwestern Sound, the day breeze had picked up. We listened and scanned in lower Knight Island Passage to no avail, and took a walk on Latouche Island to stretch our legs. The wildflowers are just coming out, and small ponds are still partially frozen on the brown muskegs. We spotted a pair of geese near one of the ponds. For the night, we tied up to the Chenega Village dock, and paid a visit to our friends Andy, Kate, and Hawken McLaughlin. Kate and Andy take identification photographs of humpback whales during the winter near the village, and Hawken enthusiastically shouts “Big whale!” when he looks through the catalogue. They also band hummingbirds, hunt, fish, gather wild plants and raise food in two greenhouses. While we visited, we nibbled on moose, smoked wild pig, cranberries, and chicken of the woods mushrooms they’d frozen last fall.

Killer whales and a tour boat.

Craig set his alarm for 4 am to begin the crossing of the Gulf, as the wind was forecasted to pick up to 20 knots in the afternoon. Eva took the first wheel watch for the calmer part of the journey, as she gets queasy in ocean swells. While there wasn’t any wind, once out of the Sound a big swell was running, about eight foot seas. We were making very slow progress with the tide against us. It wasn’t until 10:30 am that we arrived in Resurrection Bay, and our challenges began to mount. We tried to take a break in a cove, but the direction of the swell make it less than ideal for Eva to settle her stomach, so we crossed over to Agnes Bay. On the way over, a boat reported killer whales off Cape Aialik. Figuring it would be too rough to work there, Craig continued toward Agnes and calm water. Just as we arrived there, a tour boat reported that those killer whales were heading into Aialik Bay, which is generally quite calm, so after a little deliberation, we headed that way, riding steep swells around the Cape. When we rounded the corner into Aialik Bay, we could see the tour boat in the distance, and he described the whales’ location, spread out over a large area, some heading north, some more westerly, but moving very slowly. “You can’t miss them,” he told us. But miss them we did. We ran north and saw nothing. We dropped the hydrophone and heard nothing. We drove south: nothing except water sprays against distant shorelines, which looked at first glance like whale blows. In the meantime, another tour boat reported a group of 20-30 killer whales … back in Agnes Cove! Incredibly frustrated that we’d burned so much diesel and run so many miles for nothing, and missed a group in calm water, we resigned ourselves to another trip through the swells around Cape Aialik, as Craig put it “a day late and a dollar short.” A third tour boat reported that he saw the Agnes Cove whales in the open water, spread out, back in the swells. Craig took the open water route, but didn’t see whales, and in the distance, against a shoreline, saw our friend Dan Olsen’s tour boat not moving. We knew he must be recording whale calls, but he didn’t answer his radio. And we didn’t see any killer whale blows, just the blows of a pair of humpbacks near him. Was he watching humpbacks? Had we missed another encounter? By now it was 3 pm. Suddenly both Craig and I saw a single killer whale in the distance. But just one. What about the 20-30? Well, at this point, one killer whale was better than none, so we headed in Dan’s direction, and at last he answered his radio and said that a group of killer whales was traveling north of him. At last we spotted them. Feeling pessimistic by this point, Craig said that he didn’t know what he’d do if the whales turned out to the AD8’s or the AK2s, the pods he’d thoroughly covered earlier in the month.

But suddenly our bad luck turned to good. When we reached the whales and pulled in parallel to the group, we saw that they were AX48’s and AD16’s, both pods we hadn’t seen yet. For five hours we took photographs as the whales mixed and socialized with the AK’s, including the half of AK pod, the AK1’s, whom Craig hadn’t photographed earlier. In March, he’d just seen one matriline of that pod while on a humpback whale cruise on our friend Dave Janka’s boat, the Auklet. A highlight of the encounter was when AX 109, a young female, swam rapidly over to her mother and siblings with a salmon in her mouth, and shared it with them. The mood of the whales was entirely different from the residents of Hinchinbrook Entrance. Scale samples were easy to collect, and the whales filled up enough with salmon to have some energy for social interactions.

So now we’re at last in a very calm cove, two more pods have been thoroughly photo-identified (“cleaned up,” as Craig puts it) and we have tomorrow to look forward to, an extra day on the water, hopefully in the company of killer whales (and calm seas).