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We’ve been away for a few days. Luna, though, has been busy. There have been few official incidents, but he’s been finding company with a limited number of fishing boats, with the bigger vessels and tugs, and has been trying to get in to one of the resort marinas where he’s done some damage in the past.

That marina has recently installed, with DFO permission, an acoustic deterrent device (ADD) which makes loud underwater noises that whales don’t like. To a whale it’s painfully loud. Luna has tried to go into the marina several times in the past week. Each time the marina staff has briefly turned on the ADD, and Luna has left. On August 25, however, he went into the marina in spite of the ADD, and played with a sportfishing boat, damaging its kicker. The boat started up, led him out of the marina, then returned without him. At that point Luna must have found his own way back to the bay where he spends most of his time, because later in the morning when I came out in our Zodiac, he was there foraging. He was in the bay for several hours.

The day before (August 24), was also a busy day for him. About the middle of the day he interacted with a small fishing boat, and the Kakawin Guardians boat, the Wi-hut-suh-nup, came out to intervene. The boat led him back to his home territory bay.

After about an hour of foraging, Luna then jumped onto the wake of the Uchuck III as it came through the bay. (He has done this several times during the past week.) He rode it about a mile, then dropped off near a fish farm. I couldn’t see him after that, but I later talked to the fish farm workers, who said he had not been there. Luna has an ability to disappear from sight, either because the water’s rough, or because he breathes when there’s no water over his blowhole to make a fountain, or because he just gets in behind a log somewhere and rests.

Michael Parfit
Gold River