June 2026
Another month is in the books and has taken us to the halfway point of 2026, and as you can see, the Bigg's killer whales are doing what they do best this time of year: they're painting the Salish Sea red.
Each red dot on the map represents the first location a unique group of Bigg's killer whales were seen on a given day, with a total of 260 sightings throughout the 30 days of June - a record high! While there are some noticeable gaps on the map west of Sooke and in the central Strait of Georgia, these are more due to fewer eyes being in those areas than lack of whales. Additionally, some of the groups just get picked up either closer to shore or along ferry routes and then traverse into those areas throughout the course of the day, so really, the Bigg's were everywhere! You can see some sightings hotspots for the month were near Dodd Narrows off Gabriola, in Burrard Inlet and Vancouver Harbour, in Boundary Pass north of the San Juan Islands, and in Admiralty Inlet as groups go in or out of Puget Sound.
Nearly all the Salish Sea regulars made at least an appearance, with some of them like the T2Cs, T63 and T65, T99s, and T123s spending virtually the entire month in inland waters. Some less common visitors stopped by, too, including the T64Bs, T68Cs, T69Ds.
June also saw the first visit to inland waters by the Southern Residents in over 60 days with J-Pod and the Greater L4 sub-group making one lap up to the mouth of the Fraser River, then heading right back west over a period of about 48 hours. This came with the happy news of new calf L130, whose mother has yet to be 100% determined, along with the sad news that L129 (first seen in February) was no longer traveling with the group and is presumed deceased. All killer whales, but Southern Residents in particular, have a high mortality rate during the first year of life, especially during the first critical few weeks. Thankfully, L130 seems past that initial stage, looking plump and likely already several months old.
Over the last decade, June days present for Southern Residents has fluctuated between single digits (odd years) and double digits (even years), so we were hopeful they would be around more this summer. But as is so often the case with killer whales, it often seems that as soon as you identify a pattern, they change it! That means it's anyone's guess as to what the Southern Residents will do in July; 2025 was the first year on record they were not documented in the Salish Sea at all in the month of July, and looking across recent years the total number of days present is almost always less than a week.
There are no yellow dots on the map with no Northern Resident killer whale reports in June, not unexpected for the Salish Sea in the early summer. Often in July, the A42s will show up at least one in the northern reaches of the Strait of Georgia. The gray dots represent cases where killer whales were confirmed, but it was not possible to confirm ecotype; most if not all of them, however, were almost certainly Bigg's.
June was a record month for Bigg's, but the first week of July has already been off the hook. Just yesterday there were over 70 individual members of the Bigg's population documented in the Salish Sea! Over the spring months, it looked like maybe Bigg's sightings had plateaued, but now it seems like additional records will be set before the end of the summer.
