December 2024
Another year is in the books, but before we take a look at an annual summary for 2024, let's see how December shaped up for killer whale sightings in the Salish Sea.
It was a quieter but by no means quiet month, with Bigg's killer whales confirmed present on 30 days and Southern Residents on 23 days, their highest December total since we started tracking year-round presence in 2015. (Recall that the number of sightings for each is higher because we track unique groups on unique days, so some days have multiple groups of a given ecotype present.)
The theme of the month was "babies" with new little ones documented with the T68Cs, T124Ds, and T38As as well as two calves born into J-Pod, J61 born to J35, a daughter that unfortunately didn't make it, and J62 who has been traveling with the J19s.
Another interesting factor on the Bigg's killer whale front was the T37As, who after formerly being a very tight-knit family have been traveling in all sorts of different configurations over the last two years. All five living members were seen in December in the Salish Sea, but never all together. T37A and T37A2 remain the only duo consistently seen together, while T37A1 was seen with the T75Bs, T37A3 with the T36Bs, and T37A4 with the T124As. Situations like this are fascinating to document and sure raise more questions than they answer about why dispersals happen and why certain individuals choose to travel with other specific whales or matrilines.
For the second month in a row, the entire Southern Resident community was documented in inland waters in December, though for L-Pod it was only on the first of the month before they headed back west to presumably take up their winter circuit on the outer coast. Js and Ks, we believe, were likely here the entire month, though not always confirmed present on some of the days they were in the Strait of Georgia or Strait of Juan de Fuca. They ended the year with another long streak of consecutive days in Puget Sound, entering Admiralty Inlet on December 16 and remaining there into the new year.
January is typically our slowest month for Bigg's killer whale reports, but as they continue their rise in the Salish Sea (2024 was yet another record year, but more on that later) we are starting to wonder if any month will really be "slow" for them in 2025. Indeed, we've already documented multiple groups of Ts each day to start the new year!
