Orcas meander in Puget Sound area

BREMERTON, Wash. — They don’t usually wander so far inland, but a dozen or so killer whales are wowing onlookers after swimming through the Port Washington Narrows and cruising around Dyes Inlet.

Hal Fergusson, who lives in Tracyton, a small town across the inlet from Bremerton, watched the show Tuesday evening.

“Oh my!” he exclaimed. “They were breaching. Seven of them came up all at one time. The big one was flapping his flipper on the water.”

Dozens of people crowded a nearby boat launch, gawking as the whales’ black fins knifed through the water. Many recalled a similar scene in the fall of 1997, when 19 orcas swam into Dyes Inlet — a pocket of Puget Sound about 12 miles west of Seattle — and hung out for a month, feasting on a healthy run of chum salmon.

The crowds of shoreline whale watchers grew Wednesday, and Kitsap County commissioners quickly passed an ordinance to protect the orcas, limiting boats and personal watercraft speeds to 7 mph.

John Calambokidis, a research biologist with the Olympia-based Cascadia Research Collective, said he took photographs of 10 to 12 whales on Wednesday, capturing distinct physical characteristics of each animal that will help whale experts identify them.

“We did determine they were transients, and we did recognize some of the animals,” Calambokidis said.

Dave Ellifrit, a whale researcher at the Friday Harbor-based Center for Whale Research, said he was eager to see the pictures. Before Cascadia’s researchers caught the whales on film, Ellifrit surmised that the visiting whales were most likely seal-eating transients — unlike the fish-eating members of a resident pod that showed up nearly seven years ago.

“It can’t be J Pod,” Ellifrit told The Sun of Bremerton. “They went north (of the San Juans) today and then south this evening.”

Whale experts believe the other two pods that reside in Washington’s waters, K and L, are out in the ocean, where they normally spend winters before returning here around the beginning of June. The group that hung out in Dyes Inlet back in 1997 came from L Pod.

According to Ellifrit, there have been as many as 15 transients in inland waters this week, swimming around in various groupings. Early last year, a group of transients spent about two months in Hood Canal.

“They have a habit of sticking their noses in little inlets all over the place,” Ellifrit said. “They say, ‘Oh, let’s see how the eating is in here.’ “

Observers at the boat launch Tuesday guessed they had seen between five and nine whales, including at least one young orca.

“This is fun,” said Donna Puryear of Tracyton. “Where else can you drive by and see whales swimming near your car?”