May 2020

Here is our May orca sightings map for the Salish Sea. This is the second May on record without a confirmed sighting of the Southern Residents in inland waters. As with most things in 2020, however, there will be an asterisk next to that data point due to the drastically different conditions for collecting data. We actually had more orca reports in May 2020 compared to May 2019, but with an eightfold increase in the number of reports unidentified to ecotype. While we suspect most if not all of these were Bigg's/transient killer whales, there was at least one report that could have been Residents, and we will never know for sure. We will provide another visualization of this data later today.

Even with fewer eyes out there to confirm IDs, you can clearly see the Bigg's killer whales continue to abound all throughout the Salish Sea! May was, not surprisingly, the month with the most sightings of that population to date this year. Thanks as always to our many citizen scientists who share reports to all the various regional sightings networks in order to make it possible for us to compile this vast amount of information!