April 2023

Here is our April 2023 Salish Sea killer whale sightings map, showing the first location reported for each unique group of killer whales seen last month.

The Southern Residents were confirmed present on 17 days, their highest April presence since 2016. We also track "speculated days", where given their confirmed locations and travel capabilities we add additional days of presumed presence where they likely went undetected. For April, they were speculated to be present on 24 days. Nearly off these sightings were J-Pod only, but part of L-Pod was seen as well on a single day out in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Bigg's killer whales were confirmed present every single day for the month of April for the fourth time in the last seven years. You can see from the map that as usual they were found all throughout the Salish Sea, from the open Straits to some of the narrow inlets!

On 7 occasions throughout the month we were able to confirm groups of 15+ Bigg's gathered together in what we informally call "T Parties", with groups including the likes of the T36As, T49As, T65As, and all of the T124As. The brothers T125A and T128 made their first Salish Sea appearance of the season, as did the legendary T63 Chainsaw and his mom T65 Whidbey.

We anticipate Bigg's sightings will continue to be high; in both 2021 and 2022 they were confirmed present somewhere in the Salish Sea on every single day in the month of May. Meanwhile, for Southern Residents, they have been completely absent for 3 of the last 5 Mays, though last year was a noticeable uptick in their presence again. With the high J-Pod sightings continuing right through to the end of April, we are hopeful that maybe the spring Southern Resident drought may not happen again this year.

Thanks as always to the hundreds of observers that contribute sightings reports and photos to this ongoing community science effort!

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