November 2025
The penultimate month of 2025 is somehow already in the books, so it’s time for our next monthly recap of killer whale sightings. At the end of October, we predicted that November would be the highest month of the year for Southern Resident sightings in the Salish Sea (it was not) and that Bigg’s killer whale sightings would drop off considerably (they did – maybe too much!). Let’s take a closer look at how it unfolded.
The entirety of the Southern Resident killer whale community did pay a visit, including the first true superpod in inland waters this year with all 74 members of the population traveling together for a little over 2 days. Overall, we were able to confirm the presence of at least some of the SRKW on 16 days in November, which ended up being lower than in March, April, and September which all tallied over 20 days. They did spend some of their expected time in Puget Sound where they take advantage of the fall chum salmon runs but were also seen several days in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and near the San Juan and Gulf Islands.
Sadly, our Bigg’s killer whale consecutive days sighted streak came to an end, falling short of our goal of confirming their presence on all 365 days of 2025. We made it over 320 days! There ended up being 2 days in the month with no Bigg’s killer whale reports, though 28 days of presence is still our highest ever November total for that population.
Highlights of the month included a fun group of the T36/T36Bs, T137s, and T99B (11 whales) traversing the central and southern Salish Sea for almost a full month from the end of October through the third week of November. T49A2 Jude and T65A5 Indy, aka Double Trouble, kept up their shenanigans for the first half of the month as well before seemingly departing the region. The T75Bs and T75Cs, classic late-in-the-year visitors, returned at the end of the month, sadly without new calf T75B5 who was first seen in August. On the last day of the month, all of the living T30s were seen together, which is pretty cool! That group consisted of T30A Sequoia, T30B Lyra and her three offspring, and T30C Salix.
All that’s left is to see how we finish out the year and where our final numbers will land. Right now, it’s looking like we will beat the 2024 record for total number of Bigg’s killer whale sightings in a year (defined as a unique group seen on a unique day), but not by as much as I had anticipated. It’s also looking likely that 2025 will enter the books as the second lowest year for Southern Resident killer whale presence in the Salish Sea on record.
How about throwing it a few other predictions for December while we’re at it:
* Js and Ks, but not Ls will return, but with overall presence of less than 14 days in the month
* T75 and T75A will show up
* The last whales I’ll see in 2025 will be the T60 brothers
-MWS
