How To: Orca Watching in the Salish Sea
Our Salish Sea Orcas are a fascinating bunch and when we are lucky enough to watch them from our boats it is always a delight. Everyone knows Orcas are beautiful, graceful creatures — intelligent and storied hunters of the deep.
But did you know that our local orca pods are all families that bond for their entire lifetime, and that their lifetime in the wild can exceed 100 years? In fact, all of the orcas that live in the waters off British Columbia and Washington are from one extended family known as the Salish Sea Orcas or Southern Resident Orcas. This clan is unique in the sense that its isolation has allowed it to create very distinct patterns of dialect and social structures. There are occasionally transient whales, but the whales you usually see are from this local extended family.
The Southern Resident Orcas have been categorized into three pods, known as J, K and L pods which comprise about 250 whales. These groups are monitored constantly by marine biologists to assure their well being in a time when ecological factors such as over-fishing weighs against them. These families travel, forage and socialize throughout the inland waters of the Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands, Gulf Island and Georgia Strait from late spring through late summer seeking chinook salmon, which provide about 80% of their diet.
BC’s best whale-watching window is May through October and heightens as the fish near the spawning season. The best way to find them is to dial through frequencies on your boat’s radio until you hear the commercial whale watching captains communicating sightings. If you don’t have a radio, click on this page for up-to-date reports on sightings:
Click here for recent orca sightings
Thanks to orcanetwork.org, based in Washington State, we have been given some tips how to admire them safely, as boats can be very disturbing and even dangerous to the orcas.
Additionally, if you want to help out the orca and the researchers who support them, you can report your sightings, which helps them stay up to date on the pods’ movements. Some boaters get really into it, learning not only how to differentiate between pods, but how to identify individual orca by their markings and distinctive dorsal fins, information that’s readily available on the network’s website.
Tips for Safe, Enjoyable Whale Watching
And finally, for further details about local laws and whale watching guidelines take a look at these helpful guidelines: