July 2022

Here is our July 2022 Salish Sea orca sightings map!

That one yellow dot up top shows that some Northern Resident killer whales (the A42s) made one visit down to near Campbell River.

The blue dots represent the 14 days we had Southern Residents present. While they weren't all here together, all of Js, Ks, and Ls did make at least one appearance throughout the month, meaning the entire Southern Resident population paid a visit. It felt like we had them here a lot (and indeed it was double the number of days we had them here in July 2019 and 2021 combined), but it was still a week less than we had Southern Residents in either July of 2018 or 2020.

For the fourth July in a row, we had confirmed reports of Bigg's killer whales on all 31 days of the month, indicated by the red dots. Several groups, including members of the T65As and T77s, made heavy usage of Puget Sound, including the narrow inlets in the southernmost reaches. The number of individual sightings throughout the month was actually down compared to July 2021, and while well over 100 members of the Bigg's population were here in March-June, the number fell to 90 different whales last month. Historically, there was often a lull in sightings in July, so this isn't too surprising - indeed, it's less pronounced now than it used to be!

Just a reminder that each dot represents the first location of a unique sighting of a unique group of whales on a given day, so this doesn't represent everywhere the whales traveled; it's just meant to give an idea of overall unique whale sightings. This time of year, with a lot more eyes on the water, we get a lot more in the way of documentation and IDs, but the few gray dots indicate "unknown ecotype", meaning killer whales were confirmed but it was not possible to confirm specific whale IDs.