Including Tl’uk, the “little white whale”
— from KOMO News —
Well, hello there, orcas! October is proving to be quite the “orcas month”….
Nearly 20 Southern Resident orcas were spotted in Puget Sound since Friday. To the north, in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, about 40 mammal-eating orcas were spotted Saturday. They have since made their way to the San Juan Islands, including Tl’uk, the “little white whale” that made headlines earlier this year for his unusually light coloration.
Nearly ten different orca families were sighted in the vicinity, including one rarely-seen group first photographed off California in the late 1990s.
The sighting was unique in how many whales there were, but isn’t completely unexpected given a growing population that welcomed nearly 90 calves since 2012.
“This week, 2019 officially passed 2018 for Bigg’s killer whale sightings in the Salish Sea,” shares Monika Wieland Shields, President of Orca Behavior Institute. “This will be the eighth year in a row of increased transients in the region, with their presence having increased five-fold over that time. To put that in perspective, there were 125 reports of Bigg’s killer whales in the Salish Sea in all of 2011. This year, we reached 125 reports before the end of April!”
READ FULL ARTICLE: https://komonews.com/news/local/orcas-flock-in-big-numbers-to-puget-sound-in-unique-sighting
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Hopefully they’ll gobble up some of the many harbor seals who have been spotted gobbling up young Chinook salmon on their way through the Salish Sea to the Pacific Ocean.