January 2025
Here's our first monthly sightings map of 2025 featuring all the unique killer whale reports in the Salish Sea over the month of January. While the map is sparser than some of our mid-year summaries, it's actually quite busy for a January!
Bigg's killer whale sightings in particular were way up compared to previous years and for the first time ever we confirmed Bigg's presence in the Salish Sea for all 31 days of the month. While some days just had a single report, others were quite busy - on January 15th we had no fewer than 8 different groups of Bigg's reported, which is just mind-blowing for this time of year!
To start the year, the T30Bs, T117Bs, and T124As have been around, matrilines we often associate with winter visits. Joining them were many other Salish Sea regulars including the T19s, T34s and T37s, T36s, T49As, T90s, T99s, and T137s. Among these families were one of the first documented new calves of 2025 in what looks to be T36B1 Bhotia's first at age 16, a newborn designated T36B1A by Bay Cetology.
On the Southern Resident front, we had visits from members of all three pods. Js and Ks started the year in Puget Sound and the Center for Whale Research documented the greater L4 sub-group in the Strait of Juan de Fuca mid-month before all the Southern Residents departed the inland Salish Sea for the last week of January. Interestingly Js didn't seem to head up to the Strait of Georgia as the often do for stretches early in the year, but they've resumed that route here in early February.
For the second year in a row, the entirety of the A5 pod of Northern Resident killer whales also paid a visit to the Sunshine Coast of southern BC. With 12 days of reports, we actually had more confirmed days of NRKW presence than SRKW presence for January! Last year the A5s spent the entirety of the second half of February in the Salish Sea as well, so we're curious to wait and see if it happens again.
As a reminder, the gray dots on the map represent unknown ecotype reports, where we were able to confirm the presence of killer whales (eg through a cell phone photo) but not the specific ecotype. We see more of these on our winter maps when in general there's fewer eyes on the water, so often no follow up on reports to help assist with IDs. That said, it's been impressive how many groups *have* been identifiable this January, a testament to our growing network of community scientists who participate in this project!
If you'd like to keep track of real-time killer whale sightings around the San Juan Islands, we invite you to join us on Bluesky where the #WSSJIs is used to log reports. If under "Feeds" you search for "Whale Sightings SJI", you can follow our feed and any and all reports will be visible in a separate tab for your convenience. You can also find us on Bluesky HERE
