This is what fieldwork smiles look like in November!

This is what fieldwork smiles look like in November! It's chilly out there but we're calling the first two days of our Puget Sound field season a success after having two encounters with all of L-Pod. It's not often anymore you get all of L-Pod together without any other Southern Residents!

It took many hydrophone array and drone deployments to get our first successful data where the whales were actually vocalizing, but it finally happened, prompting these two thumbs up from Monika.

It felt serendipitous to also be on the water for L-Pod's first return to Penn Cove (that we know of) since the infamous capture of 1970. The only whale in the current pod who was alive at that time was L25, but she wasn't among the whales photographed in that capture so we aren't even 100% sure she was there. We can only speculate what the whales know or don't know about the events of decades past, but it was an amazing moment to witness from the water!