November 2022

Here is our November Salish Sea orca sightings map!

A definite high point of the month was having all 73 Southern Resident killer whales present for 17 days, something that hasn't happened in recent memory. The superpod traversed the entirety of the Salish Sea from Campbell River to Vashon Island, eventually splitting into different groups. By the end of the month, only J-Pod remained in inland waters. We had confirmed Southern Resident sightings on 22 days in November (the highest for any month in 2022), but our speculated SRKW count is 25 days, since Js went undetected in the Strait of Georgia for a few days towards the end of the month.

Our Bigg's killer whale count also came in at 22 days with confirmed reports for November. A highlight included the T34s and T37s showing up with a new calf. Overall, the fewest number of Bigg's killer whales for any month of 2022 were recorded at just over 50 different whales, but Salish Sea regulars such as the T18s, T49As, T99s, T123s, and T137s all made appearances.

This time of year we also get more reports of "unknown ecotype", indicated by the gray dots. These are cases where we've been able to confirm orcas were present, but could not confirm IDs as either resident or Bigg's. Just a reminder too that each dot represents a unique sighting on a unique day, so this doesn't represent everywhere the whales traveled, but rather the number of different groups that were seen throughout the month.

It's hard to believe there's only one more month left in 2022, but it has started out with nice weather and J-Pod still sticking around. Just a few more weeks and we can look at our final whale sightings numbers and maps for the year!