August 2023
August was an interesting month across all three orca populations that visit the Salish Sea! Here is our latest monthly map showing the initial sighting locations for all the unique groups of resident and Bigg's killer whales documented by community scientists last month.
As in July, the Northern Residents continued to visit the Discovery Islands in the northern Strait of Georgia in August. The A42s made up many of the reports, but at least the A54s were documented there as well. For the second month in a row, there were many more days of Northern Resident presence (15) in the Salish Sea than Southern Residents (6).
While the Southern Residents weren't around much, all members of the population did make at least one visit to inland waters, though the L54 sub-group wasn't with all the others so we didn't quite get a true superpod. Interestingly, the bulk of Js, Ks, and Ls made an unusual August foray all the way up to Campbell River, spending a day foraging in the same waters the Northern Residents had been frequenting! They were not, however, present in the same area at the same time.
Meanwhile, while you can see there were a LOT of Bigg's sightings, it was still a bit of an unusual month. The first two weeks of August were actually pretty quiet, with our consecutive days of sightings streak actually in jeopardy a couple of times until single reports came in! The second half of the month, however, went gangbusters. There were numerous days with over ten different groups of Bigg's in the region, with many matrilines returning from what was likely their regular summer trip to southeast Alaska, including the T60s, T71Bs and T124Ds, and T109Bs. We're still finalizing the count, but August had the most individual Bigg's killer whales confirmed present for any month yet in 2023.
Typically September is one of the most orca-filled months in the Salish Sea, so we'll see what's in store over the next few weeks. Bigg's killer whale reports often begin to slow down a little bit, with our spring-to-fall consecutive day streak often ending towards the end of the month. Despite continued declines in April through August, the Southern Residents have kept up September presence at or near historic numbers in recent years, so we are sure hoping that trend continues and we get some quality time with them this month.
