Who is your favorite roving bull orca?

One thing we see in the Bigg's killer whale population that we don't see in the Southern Residents community is the roving male. Roving males are adult bulls that, either by being orphans or by dispersing from their mothers, become independent units of just a single orca.

Sometimes these roving males are seen completely on their own, providing evidence against a common local myth that orcas are always in pods or family groups. But really they become social butterflies as well, hanging out with many different related and unrelated whales for short periods of time without having any permanent traveling companions.

One of our favorite roving males is T49C Neilson, seen here in the Strait of Juan de Fuca earlier this month. Neilson is a 28 year-old male that became a roving male after his mom T49 passed away. He was originally named Janet after Alaskan whale researcher Janet Neilson, but after it was determined he was a male, most of the naturalist community decided to call him Neilson instead.

While one of his common traveling companions in the Salish Sea is his nephew T49A2 Jude, another roving male, I always find it fascinating to observe Neilson on his own. Doing so dispels another myth that solo orcas don't engage in a wide variety of behaviors. I like to call him a "party of one" because whether it's his unpredictable travel patterns, hunting, kelping, or being surface active, it seems like he's always getting up to something.

Who is your favorite roving bull orca, and why?