Where has T46D been?
Several folks have reached out to ask this after seeing the recent Orca Network reports of the T46s in Puget Sound with the note "sans T46D". Is he supposed to be with them? Is he missing?
In recent years, the T46s were a stable group of five whales: matriarch T46, her adult daughter who has no offspring of her own T122, and her sons T46D, T46E, and T46F. Last spring, T46 passed away, and while sometimes this leads to a split among the surviving descendants, the T46s continued to travel as a foursome throughout the rest of 2023.
But T46D has always been a bit of a wanderer. His common name is Strider, after the ranger in the Lord of the Rings, for this reason. He doesn't split off as often as some other Bigg's males, like T49A1 Noah, but it was not alarming to me that he wasn't with his family on their recent visit to Puget Sound.
For those who were concerned, we even got confirmation of his whereabouts! Thanks to photos taken by Jason Duncan and shared by Comox Valley Wildlife Sightings, we learned that T46D has been traveling with some of his more extended family: niece T46B1 Tread and her two offspring and niece T46C2 Sam.
It's thanks to decades of research by dedicated scientists and an incredible network of community scientists throughout the Salish Sea that we know and can track these sorts of stories! They always raise more questions than they answer, but it's one of the most fascinating aspects of tracking Bigg's killer whales.
