SRKW Annual 2024

Here is our annual summary map for Southern Resident killer whale visits to the Salish Sea in 2024! It was a drastically different year than 2023, with a whopping 48% increase in sightings last year compared to the year before. 2023 had been a huge dip from 2022, but 2024 was still up 12.5% compared to 2022. This increase occurred across all four seasons, with the most dramatic jumps in spring and fall.

This cumulative map shows the initial sighting location for every Southern Resident orca group throughout the entire year color coded by season. You can see how much time the whales spent in the Strait of Georgia in the spring (green dots). May was one of the months with the largest change in Southern Resident presence. Southern Residents were confirmed in the Salish Sea on 20 days in 2024 compared to just 2 days in 2023 and ZERO days in 2018, 2020, and 2021. In fact, 20 days is the highest total for May SRKW presence in the last decade! Perhaps most incredible for 2024 was that it included presence from all three pods, not just J-Pod as we have seen in recent springs. We took this as a hopeful sign that perhaps some of the crucial Fraser River spring Chinook salmon runs were stronger this year after being very low in recent years.

Even more dramatic than the spring increase was the fall increase, represented by all the red dots in Puget Sound on the map, with each pod spending chunks of time feasting on the abundant chum salmon runs, and consistent Southern Resident presence for weeks on end through October and November. The only confirmed Southern Resident superpod in inland waters for the year (with the entire population traveling together in one group) occurred in Puget Sound on November 1.

Based on the above, it was no surprise that November was the month with highest Southern Resident killer whale presence in the Salish Sea, followed by October and December. It’s become clear not just from this year but from all recent years that these months are now when Southern Residents are most consistently in inland waters. Gone are the days when the whales were a near daily presence from May through September, as was the case for decades. In fact, August was the month of lowest SRKW presence in 2024, with just 3 days of confirmed presence. While spring and fall salmon runs may have had an uptick, the Southern Residents clearly still prefer their new summer foraging pattern of spending time off the western end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca in places like Swiftsure Bank. (And to be clear, they have superpods out west a lot – it’s just in inland waters that superpods have become less common.)

Overall, with their increased presence, 2024 felt like a positive sign for the Southern Residents, though it was at odds with the loss of J60, L128, and J61. We hope to see that there enough fish to keep them here more again in 2025, and that the particularly strong chum salmon run at the end of 2024 will lead to a few more successful pregnancies carried to term. J62, still looking strong, is an optimistic start.