November 2024
Here is our Salish Sea killer whale sightings map for the penultimate month of 2024, and what a month it was! As you can see from the sightings graph, both Bigg’s and Southern Resident killer whale reports were up for November compared to 2023. (Remember we define a sighting as a unique group reported on a unique day.)
Our Salish Sea Bigg’s killer whale streak – the number of consecutive days we are able to confirm the presence of Ts – came to an end on November 4, concluding a respectable run that spanned all the way back to March 12th. That’s 236 days in a row of Bigg’s killer whale reports, the second longest we’ve documented but falling short of the 2023 record that went from March into December.
November started out with some excitement as on the 1st of the month a new Bigg’s killer whale calf was seen and later designated T34A2. That’s more than a dozen new calves so far in 2024! The T34s and T37s would be around for most of the month, giving many folks an opportunity to meet the new little one. Also around in November were the extended T65s (T63 and T65, T65As, and T65Bs), staying much later into the fall than they typically do in the Salish Sea. Other families seen regularly throughout the month were the T46Bs, T99s, and T137s. The T99s have an interesting development of their own: T99B hasn’t been traveling with them. Per Bay Cetology’s Finwave, she was photographed near the end of October with a small calf, but not since then, so we are all eagerly awaiting the next sighting of T99B to see if she does indeed have her first documented calf with her.
The Southern Residents came into November with their own streak on the line: number of consecutive days in Puget Sound. We expect all three pods to visit Puget Sound in the late fall and early winter, but usually they come and go throughout the season. November started with Southern Residents in Puget Sound every day from October 19th onward, and we wondered how long the streak could possibly last. It ended up continuing all the way to November 15th!
Over the course of those four weeks the entire Southern Resident community paid a visit to Puget Sound to feast on the abundant fall chum runs this year. It was an awesome run to document and even when they had an absence, it wasn’t a long one. We actually ended up having confirmed presence of the Southern Residents in the Salish Sea on 28 days of the month, one higher than the 27 days on the Bigg’s killer whale tally! Per our records to find the last month where this happened, we have to go all the way back to November 2017!
