February 2022

Here's a look at February sightings for orcas in the Salish Sea: would you look at the Bigg's hotspot that the Nanoose/Nanaimo area has become! It seems they've had one or more groups of orcas in the area nearly every day in recent weeks. You can't even see all the dots because they are piled on top of one another. In total, we were able to confirm the presence of Bigg's killer whales in the Salish Sea on 23 days of February.

The A42s and A94, who spent much of the second half of January in the Sunshine Coast and Howe Sound region, were still present in early February before heading north. Bay Cetology reported them heading out Queen Charlotte Strait on February 18.

J-Pod left the Salish Sea at the end of January but returned on February 11. They were confirmed present on 11 days of the month, but based on when and where they were seen, we believe they were here consistently since that day, so our new "speculated days" metric has them likely here on 18 days in February.

March is often when we begin to get an influx of Ts (Bigg's) in the southern part of the Salish Sea, where you can see sightings were pretty sparse in February. Meanwhile we expect J-Pod to still be around for much of this month too, before making their departure from the region in April to the outer coast.