April 2024
Every time we think that surely the Bigg's killer whale sightings cannot go up from here, they prove us wrong in dramatic fashion. Here is our April 2024 Salish Sea killer whale sightings map, and not only were they present on every day in the month of April, but the number of unique sightings increased by more than 60 compared to last year!
Most of the "unknown ecotype" sightings on the map - which means we confirmed the presence of killer whales but could not confirm ecotype - are almost certainly Bigg's as well, meaning this total would be even higher.
There are more than 380 members of the inner-coastal sub-population of West Coast Transients, and we tend to get about 250 of them visiting the Salish Sea each year. Some days in April, more than 50 individuals were confirmed present, and over the course of the month, we were able to document the presence of at least 110 different members of the population. This included many familiar fins as well as some rarer visitors to the Salish Sea in the T146s and T146As.
On the resident killer whale front, not surprisingly for this time of year we didn't have any reports of Northern Residents. For Southern Residents, only J-Pod was confirmed in inland waters, which is also not unusual in the spring. We had 15 unique sightings of them this April compared to 18 last year, and like 2023, they were seen throughout most of their Salish Sea range from Puget Sound to Campbell River.
Over the last decade or so J-Pod has made their "spring exit" in April, but interestingly this year they came back at the end of the month and are still in the Salish Sea as of the beginning of May! We hope this is a sign that there's enough for them to eat here and that they might be able to return to their historic pattern of staying in the Salish Sea through the spring.
Going into May, we are in the thick of the chaos of accurately tracking whale sightings: on May 1st there were at least 14 different groups of killer whales reported! We will continue to do our best to record all of the whales reported by our awesome network of community scientists, including those at Orca Network, the Pacific Whale Watch Association, and all of you who share photos and videos on the regional sightings pages like Whale Sightings in the San Juan Islands!
