After too many months to count, J pod returned in force vocalizing at Orcasound.lab for more than an hour on Saturday, March 25, starting about 8:30 am PST. The passby featured bouts of echolocation clicks and many, many vocalizations. Here is a plot of 2 minutes of hydrophone signals at about 8:45 am.

On Saturday morning, when it seemed that the passby had some reasonable chance of continuing, a notification went out to all those on our Orcasound Slack general channel. A report also went in via the WhaleAlert app. Scott and Alisa at Orca Network quickly activated and notifications went out to many individuals.

As the passby progressed, the number of online listeners grew and grew.

I hope this fabulous passby and recording sets the stage for many more this spring. Orcasound hydrophones are being replaced and upgraded after a winter of hydrophone decay and destruction and a new node on San Juan Channel is likely in the next few months.