CWR Biggs encounter #1

EncSummary: Mark headed out after a report, and within a few minutes, he was able to confirm that it was 19-year-old T049A2 “Jude” along with his old friend, 45-year-old T051 “Roswell”. This pair had been seen a few days earlier in Clayoquot Sound, and evidently made their way down the coast in short order.

T049A2 has been seen regularly in recent months, skulking around the Salish Sea with other wandering males, including his older brother T049A1, his uncle T049C, and the oldest known Bigg’s bull in the community, T087. T051 hadn’t been seen in the Salish Sea since June 2024, when Mark came across him early one morning near Mandarte Island

In mid-August of 2023, T049A2 and T051 were apparently ‘trapped’ in Barnes Lake, Southeast Alaska. They were in the salt water lagoon, the entrances to which were impassable at low tides, for six weeks before being lured out by research colleagues using playback recordings of other known Bigg’s. The recent sighting in Tofino was the first time these two have been documented travelling together since the Barnes Lake encounter.

Mark observed them for 50 minutes as they headed to the Vancouver Island shoreline near Albert Head. They took a line for Race Passage, often spread across a quarter mile. Mark later heard from colleagues that the pair went deep into Pedder Bay before turning, moving off the shoreline of Vancouver Island and angling southeast; they were photographed inside Port Angeles Harbour, early in the evening!

Read more about T049A2 and T051’s misadventure into Barnes Lake at: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/coffman-cove-residents-help-free-two-killer-whales-barnes-lake.