December 2022

Here is our December 2022 Salish Sea orca sightings map!

We had confirmed Southern Resident killer whale presence on 17 days in December, but if we add in our "speculated days" (e.g. the whales being undetected in the Strait of Georgia) that number rises to 28! Our best guess in fact is that J-Pod was in the Salish Sea from November 6 every day right through to December 28. In addition to J-Pod, K-Pod made two visits in December and Ls made one visit shortly before Christmas. You can see that they spent a lot of time in Puget Sound but also made a couple forays into the northern Strait of Georgia. Incredibly compared to historic patterns, the four months with the most SRKW days in 2022 were September-December.

Meanwhile on the Bigg's killer whale front, we had confirmed presence on 23 days in December, pretty consistent with the recent average. The T137s, T123s, and T46s were all around a fair amount, and we also saw the first 2022 Salish Sea visit from the T73As. More than 80 different Bigg's were documented in December, nearly 30 whales more than we were able to confirm used the Salish Sea in November.

You'll also notice that one yellow dot represents a Northern Resident killer whale visit near Lund, BC!

This time of year we also get more reports of "unknown ecotype", indicated by the gray dots. These are cases where we've been able to confirm orcas were present, but could not confirm IDs as either resident or Bigg's. And a reminder that each dot represents a unique sighting on a unique day, so this doesn't represent everywhere the whales traveled, but rather the number of different groups that were seen throughout the month.

As always, a huge thank you to the literally hundreds of observers that share their reports and make this type of tracking possible, including our partners at Pacific Whale Watch Association and Orca Network. Stay tuned for our 2022 annual maps for both Bigg's and Southern Residents coming too as we summarize the overall numbers of last year!