May 2023
The month of May means it's time to paint the Salish Sea red with Bigg's killer whale sightings! For the third year in a row we had confirmed presence of Bigg's every single day in the month, and as you can see they frequented the entirety of the region from north to south.
Since we're "topping out" when looking at days present, it's been interesting to also look at number of sightings and number of whales to track the overall high abundance of Bigg's. Each red dot on this map represents 168 unique groups seen on unique days last month, right on par with our 169 sightings in May 2022.
Meanwhile the number of individual Ts using the Salish Sea each month has been consistent at just over 100 each of the last three months, which is actually down from last year where we were seeing numbers of over 120 different Bigg's this time of year. But, some of the ones who have been here have been staying here for weeks or months at a time. The T71Bs and T124Ds, for example, came in the second week of April and stayed in the Salish Sea 7 weeks until the end of May.
Many have also been wondering about sightings year-to-date compared to last year, since 2022 was another record year for Bigg's killer whale presence. We are indeed up overall through the month of May by more than 50 sightings in 2023 compared to the same time period of 2022.
And just when we thought the Southern Residents might put up a zero in May for the fourth time in the last six years, J-Pod was heard on the Lime Kiln hydrophone on the night of May 30th and seen doing their regular summer circuit through the central Salish Sea on May 31st, as represented by the two blue dots on the map.
Gray dots indicate reports where killer whales were confirmed but we did not receive enough information to confirm ecotype; most or all of these are almost certainly Bigg's, but without the evidence we can't say with 100% certainty.
Thanks as always to the hundreds of people who contribute sightings to these maps and make this type of orca tracking possible, and to our map wizard Tom Filipovic for creating these fun visuals!
