February 2025
February in the Salish Sea....we always tend to think of it as a quiet winter month. On the killer whale sightings front, it is in fact a quieter month than most, but it is far busier than it used to be! Case in point: we had 96 unique Bigg's killer whale sightings in February 2025, a full 220% increase compared to February 2023!
While there were hardly any Bigg's sightings in Puget Sound in January, on many days Puget Sound carried the day in February, with sometimes as many as 5 different groups present at once! Members of the extended T124 matriline were among those who frequented the southern reaches of the Salish Sea in February, as were the T46s, T99s, and T137s.
The most surprising visitor to Puget Sound was CA45B, an adult male known from the California Killer Whale Project. This is the first time we know of that he has visited the Salish Sea, and he was associating with members of the West Coast Transient population. Unlike in resident killer whales, the boundaries between transient killer whale populations appear to be a bit more blurred, as this isn't the first time the California and West Coast populations have associated, but it's still uncommon to see any of the "CA" Ts in Washington's inland waters!
Southern Resident killer whale sightings were about on par with last year, with both Js and Ks making appearances but also "disappearing" for stretches of time in the vast waters of the Strait of Georgia where there are even fewer eyes out to potentially see them this time of year. Noticeable, however, was the sharp decline in Northern Resident killer whale reports compared to last year. In 2024, all of A5 pod spent much of February on the Sunshine Coast of BC, but this year, their appearances were few and far between.
Typically in March we expect Southern Resident sightings to stay pretty similar to February, Bigg’s killer whale sightings to start ramping up even more, and Northern Resident to leave the Salish Sea until mid-summer. We can’t wait to see what the month ahead will have in store for us!
