Already a record year for killer whale sightings in the Salish Sea

It’s been a killer year to spot killer whales.

The numbers don’t yet include Nov. and Dec., but already 2023 has seen a record 1,270 unique sightings in the Salish Sea, including—as of yesterday—at least a sighting a day for 241 consecutive days.

“This is the ninth year out of the last 10 that the record has been broken,” said Monika Wieland Shields, director of the Orca Behaviour Institute (OBI), which compiles whale sighting reports from professional whale watchers, regional sightings groups, and community scientists throughout the Salish Sea in both Canada and the US.

“Only 2020 showed a slight dip, probably due to decreased observation due to Covid-19.”

The reports, confirmed with photographs, indicated there have been 50 more sightings than last year, with two months remaining in 2023.

A unique sighting is a sighting of a particular family on a particular day, without duplication.

“When we say there’s been almost 1,300 unique sightings, that’s like 1,300 different sightings all over the year,” Erin Gless, executive director of the Pacific Whale Watch Association, which represents 30 member companies in BC and Washington state.

“We don’t count multiple sightings.”

Bigg's killer whales are transient, but they're becoming locals

The sightings exclusively were of Bigg’s—often referred to as transient—killer whales, notably because as of 2019, BC whale watch vessels are not allowed to watch Southern Resident whales in BC waters. Washington state adopted similar measures two years later.

“People once referred to them as ‘transient’ killer whales because sightings were so rare”, said Gless, “but now we’re seeing them almost daily, and we have their food to thank for that.”

The meat of the matter is what they eat

Unlike the Southern Resident orcas, Bigg’s killer whales feed on marine mammals, primarily seals, sea lions, and porpoises, which have become more plentiful in recent years.

These animals were the targets of now-kaput government-run bounty programs in BC and several US states including Washington in the 1960s and 70s. Half a dozen decades later, their numbers have rebounded, attracting the Bigg’s in numbers previously not seen.

“Ten years ago, we were only getting 15% of that,” Shields said, referring to an era when there were 300 Bigg’s left. Fast forward that decade and the Bigg’s population has increased 33% to 400.

“There’s more of them,” Gless tells Capital Daily. “They just keep having baby after baby after baby, and in addition to having more whales, they’re spending more time in this area.”

You’ll no doubt note more media reports showing orcas heading into Victoria Harbour, Howe Sound, right up along the beaches in Nanaimo, or passing through the waters off Oak Bay.

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A male Bigg's whale spyhops near Vancouver. Photo: Ashley Keegan, Wild Whales Vancouver

“What we’re finding is there’s not so much as a magic hang-out spot, but because they’re just spending so much more time here in general, we are having a lot more encounters, especially encounters close to shore where all the little seals and sea lions hang out by the beach,” Gless said.

“There’s a lot more people aware that the whales are here, so there’s a lot more eyes out looking for them now, so we’re getting a lot more of those really cool sightings.”

J, K and L pods continue to struggle

As for the other killer whales, through Oct., there were 112 Southern Resident sightings, compared with 193 sightings for the entirety of last year and 121 in 2021.

More concerning, is we’re down to 74 salmon-eating Southern Residents. Two were born this year, but K-Pod lost Cali, or K34, which hasn’t been seen with its family since July and is presumed dead, according to the Center for Whale Research. In 1999, the J, K and L pods numbered 98 in total.

And with a foundering fish stock—Southern Residents love themselves some chinook, coho and chum salmon—the future of these animals remains as precarious as it was two decades ago when the orca was declared endangered by both Canada and the US.

The obvious and oft-posed question is why, if there’s not enough salmon, would these intelligent animals not go off-menu and start eating seals, sea lions instead of swimming around looking for salmon that’s no longer there?

The answer may be a bit surprising: It’s not in its genes to hunger for pinnipeds.

These whales are not the same

Turns out Bigg’s–-transients, if you will—and Southern Resident orcas are basically two different species. They just haven’t been officially identified as such yet.

“From a distance, they look very similar and on paper, as of 2023 they’re still technically the same species (Orcinus orca) but they have not bred with each other for more than half a million years,” Gless tells Capital Daily.

“So, if you look at their DNA, their DNA is totally separate, we should treat them as totally different species.”

Gless says genetically they are different, they don’t breed with each other, they don’t even interact with each other.

“They actually really go out of their way to avoid each other.”

Southern Resident killer whales are not going to start hungering and hunting for seals anytime soon.

“They just don’t look at seals as a food item because they’ve never been taught that by their parents, they’ve never been trained to hunt seals, “ she tells Capital Daily.

Gless says it’s been only 40 years since their food supply has been threatened, and it’s going to take the measured, unhurried process of evolution to unfold if it's going to develop a taste for another type of sustenance.

She says the scientific community is planning to make them two separate species, it just hasn’t “pulled the trigger yet and I think it’s actually just because they can’t decide what the scientific names will be, it doesn’t have anything to do with debating whether or not they’re separate species.”

As much as Wednesday’s OBI numbers bring good news for the Bigg’s—named after orca research pioneer Michael Bigg, who was first to establish there’s more than one type of killer whale around here—it’s not good news for the Southern Residents.

The future is clouded for these magnificent animals

Gless says she’s concerned about chatter from both sides of the border suggesting it’s time to resume hunts on seals and sea lions hunts in order to bolster salmon populations.

“As whale watchers, obviously we’re concerned that if they do that, we’ll just end up going right back to where we were 50 years ago, with not only no Bigg's killer whales, but no Southern Resident killer whales, either,” she tells Capital Daily.

“We don’t want to have two populations of killer whales that don’t have food.”