August 2026
Well August in the Salish Sea was quite a month! Let's see how it shaped up relative to my predictions:
❌ No SRKW visit in August. I'm happy to report that my reverse psychology worked (😉) and K-Pod showed up on August 2nd to break the streak of over six weeks without Southern Residents. In fact, throughout the course of August, all members of all three pods paid a visit at one point or another! In total, they were here on 11 days, their highest August total since 2019.)
✅ - No A42s visiting Campbell River. This one I got right, as the A42s have continued to be scarce this summer, making just one brief visit to the Johnstone Strait region but not venturing as far south as the Strait of Georgia. Instead, it was the other members of the A5 Pod - the A23s and A25s - who made a quick visit to the Campbell River area this August.
✅ - Bigg's will set another sightings record. When I said this, I meant a sightings record for the month of August, but I had no idea they would blow our all-time monthly record out of the water (no pun intended). There were *320 sightings* of Bigg's in August, defined as a unique group seen on a unique day. This is the first time we have exceeded 300 sightings in a single month!The first location each group was seen is represented as a red dot on the map, so if you saw them somewhere else, that's probably where they traveled later in the day after first being picked up! You can see that the Victoria region and the northern San Juan Islands were particular hotspots.
Additionally, we are happy to report that our sightings sleuth Brooke was able to find photos of Bigg's on July 19th, the day that we thought broke our consecutive sightings streak. That means the streak is back on, and we have still confirmed Bigg's present in the Salish Sea every single day since February 22nd.
September has become one of the more unpredictable months, so I don't dare make any guesses as to how it will unfold this year. But I do look forward to there continuing to be a lot of orcas, hopefully from both ecotypes!
