1986 Second meeting with Talon 9/29/86 #1

86 9-29 Talon+CBS02

Originally uploaded by yeimaya.

It turned out Fissure and his companion were leading us towards two other whales who were breaching off in the distance, first one then the other. We wondered if Fissure was drawn by their breaching as much as we were. To us it was incredibly exciting to see these enormous beings fly out of the water and come smashing down again sending up an enormous spray. We wondered how Fissure experienced it under water, it must have made a pretty thunderous sound. Was he drawn towards them by their breaching? We totally lost track of Fissure in our excitement, there is nothing more about him in my notes.



As we got closer the breaching stopped and they began flipper slapping, lying close and parallel to each other, first one then the other. When we shut down the engines a few hundred yards away, they seemed to notice us and first one then the other rolled onto its belly and dove. Just before diving, the one on the right gave what is called a wheeze or trumpet blow, a forceful exhale that sounds a bit like someone blowing on a very big trumpet mouthpiece.







We could see they both had black tails making it very hard to tell which was which. It turns out that this one was Talon:





And this one was maybe FiveJ or who knows?





But the dorsals did help. Remember Talon had a white pattern on the right side of her dorsal? Unfortunately it didn't show very well when her left side was facing us, but her dorsal was clearly pointier than the other whales.





The other whale's dorsal has a very rounded tip in comparison. This whale looks small to me, so maybe it was a young one that wasn't in the catalogue yet