October 2023
Here is our October Salish Sea killer whale sightings map, compiling confirmed sightings of orcas from Campbell River, BC to Olympia, WA. The take home message is: the opposite trends of Southern Resident and Bigg's killer whales continues.
For the first October on record, we had confirmed reports of Bigg's killer whales every single day of the month. The T109A2s, formerly uncommon visitors to the inland waters, spent the entire month here, beginning in the San Juan Islands and then moving down to Puget Sound. But it wasn't just them: There were over a dozen sightings of groups of 10+ whales! Other family groups that spent a lot of time here in October were the T35As and T38As, T36 and the T36Bs, and the T123s.
Meanwhile the Southern Residents were only confirmed present on 9 days in October, below their five-year average of 14 days. Between October 11th and 17th, members of all three pods made a quick trip into Puget Sound and up into the Strait of Georgia before departing again. On October 25, just J-Pod returned for another short Puget Sound visit.
As we're nearing the end of 2023 we have a guess as to how the yearly Salish Sea numbers might stack up, too. During October, we surpassed the 2022 record number of unique Bigg's killer whale sightings, meaning 2023 will be yet another record year - the ninth such year out of the last ten, with only 2020 showing a slight dip (probably due to the decreased observation due to COVID). We've had over 1200 unique sightings of Bigg's in the Salish Sea both last year and this year - ten years ago we were only getting 15% of that!!!!
On the Southern Resident front, this is looking like it will be the second lowest year for their presence on record, with only 2021 coming in with fewer days. Their declining presence in the spring (the new normal) has now clearly extended into the summer, and we're getting the first glimpses that it may carry over into the fall months, too.
We've got three big questions going into November: How long will the consecutive days of confirmed Bigg's streak last? How high will the 2023 record for Bigg's sightings go? And will the Southern Residents spend their usual ~20 days in the Salish Sea in November? We can't wait to see how it all shapes up.
