CWR logs encounter with Biggs whales

EncSummary: Mark left Victoria on Mike 1 at 1355 to catch up with a large group of Bigg’s killer whales socializing in the central Juan de Fuca.

Earlier in the day, the T049Bs, T117A, T117B, T117B1, and T172 had been found south of Constance Bank heading west. This group had recently been seen together in Barkley Sound, along the west coast of Vancouver Island, in late March. The most recent Salish Sea documentation of the T117-T172 gang was mid-February, when they spent time with the T019s, but the T049Bs have not been documented in the region since the end of 2025, and in recent years, they have been much rarer visitors than the rest.

The T019s, regular visitors to the Salish Sea, were picked up early in the afternoon, completing a counter-clockwise lap of Vancouver Island. They were heading quickly toward the large rambunctious group of seven who were now just a few miles south of Race Rocks.

As Mark was leaving the harbour, he heard from a couple of his colleagues in the area that as the T019s had approached, the others turned and fled to the east for close to thirty minutes before they slowed to allow T019 and her boys to join them.

Mark arrived to see a group of ten whales milling about in a social group, and within five minutes, the 31-year-old T019B exploded out of the water with a spectacular breach, before his 25-year-old brother, T019C, followed suit. The group then started to head northeast for a few minutes before turning west and picking up the pace.

It appeared that they may have heard other animals in the distance as they were fairly animated with occasional tail lobs as they continued at an above-average pace westward.

Mark decided to end the encounter and head west to see if there were any inbound animals. He stopped south of Sooke for a binocular scan, but with no sign of any fins on the horizon, he turned back east and headed for Victoria.