Experts expect the recent arrival of chum salmon to bring orcas back to Puget Sound

UPDATE: Monday, Nov. 3

Whales return to Central Puget Sound without youngest calf

All three pods of southern resident killer whales traveled into Central Puget Sound Sunday, making it as far south as the southern end of Vashon Island, if not farther. The past few days, various whales have been spotted in the San Juan Islands and North Puget Sound, according to reports on Orca Network Community Group, where many whale watchers have posted their observations.

Orca Network reported that J and K pods and one group of L pod (the Greater L4s) were present off Vashon, for a total of 59 whales. Information was provided by Orca Behavior Institute. As of this morning, a group of orcas was seen near Whidbey Island.

With many viewpoints available on land, as noted on maps by Orca Network and The Whale Trail, observers are advised to watch the whales from shore to reduce interference with their hunting for salmon.

Since I posted this blog entry on Oct. 27, the Center for Whale Research has issued a sad report telling us that the newest calf in J pod, J 64, born in September, could not be found during an encounter with the whales on Oct. 23.

“Based on this encounter, we are confirming that J64 is most likely deceased,” states a report of the encounter. “We will continue to monitor in future encounters, as our standard protocol is to consider a whale deceased after observing three consecutive encounters without the whale present. However, unlike adult whales, which may travel a significant distance from other whales for extended periods, we would not expect a newborn to be on its own for any length of time.”

J64 was the first confirmed calf born to J42, an 18-year-old named Echo. During the first year of life, mortality rates are high for southern resident calves, especially for those born to first-time mothers. Factors include poor general nutrition as well as the transfer of toxic chemicals from mother to calf during physical development before birth and during lactation following birth, officials say.

October 27

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Chum salmon are on the run into Puget Sound, and our southern resident killer whales may not be far behind.

The observed number of orcas in the three pods now stands at 75, including a new calf born in September. The latest census report by the Center for Whale Research comes with increasing concern about the future of these endangered orcas, which appear to be suffering from an ongoing food shortage.

While the orcas prefer Chinook salmon, they appear more than willing to settle for chum when those fish are in abundance — as they were this time last year when a record number of chum began showing up in Central/South Puget Sound. This year’s chum run is expected to be substantial — perhaps not quite as large as last year’s — and all of this contributes to an interesting and ongoing story about the travels of these endangered orcas.

First, regarding this year’s census report, which is a listing of all living whales in the three southern resident pods submitted to the federal government on Oct. 1: The numbers remain as I reported them in July in Water Ways after the Center or Whale Research made a special five-day trip to the coast. There, the researchers encountered every living member of all three pods foraging for salmon in an area called Swiftsure Bank, near the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The census count for this year stands at 74, up one animal from the year before. That number consists of adding two new calves born during the year and still living along with the single death of 31-year-old Lobo, or K26, a male reported missing in October last year. Two other calves also were born, but they died during the year, so they get counted as both births and deaths, as I reported in the July blog post.

After the census book was closed for the year, another new calf was born in September, bringing the current observed population to 75. Designated J64, the young whale is the first calf born to J42, an 18-year-old named Echo. The calf seems to be doing well as of late September, when J pod was last observed in the Salish Sea.

Other events that did not make the census record were the sad observations of dead calves not living long enough to gain official recognition. In January, 27-year-old Tahlequah, or J35, was seen pushing a dead newborn calf at the water’s surface near Alki Point in West Seattle, as reported in a NOAA Fisheries news release. Tahlequah is the same whale that gained worldwide attention in 2018 when she carried a dead newborn calf around for 17 days.

Finally, last month, 26-year-old Alki was observed pushing a dead newborn calf at the surface in Rosario Strait east of the San Juan Islands. This behavior by Tahlequah, Alki and others has been interpreted by many as a final act of mourning for a dead offspring that had been carried in the mother’s womb for about 18 months.

Condition of the orcas

“The underlying story is a mixed bag for these whales,” said Michael Weiss, research director for the Center for Whale Research when asked about this year’s census. “J pod continues to be our best-producing pod. They grew by two to 27. L pod had no change, with one birth and one death, while K pod continues to decline, now tied for the lowest census number (since the survey began 50 years ago).”

No births have been seen in K pod since May of 2022, when Prosper (K45) was born to Spock (K20). Now 3 years old, Prosper “appears to be a healthy and active young whale,” according to the latest census report. The death of Lobo (K26) brings the number of K pod whales down to 14.

L pod, consisting of 33 whales, has been “struggling to get anything going,” Michael told me. One new calf (L128, a male) was born in L pod during the census year, but he lived only a few weeks. While L pod is the largest of the three pods, it is also the least socially cohesive, a phrase used to describe how the pod often separates into three different groups.

In a matriarchal society, like that of killer whales, the animals tend to stay with their mothers for life, forming multi-generational groups (matrilines) with elder females often leading the way. Pods consist of several families traveling together.

“The Southern Residents have a much lower reproductive output than other killer whale populations, even those living in the same region,” Michael noted in a written statement accompanying the census report. “Their dependence on declining Chinook runs means they face nutritional stress that directly affects their ability to reproduce and raise healthy calves.”

In recent years, the general physical condition of the southern resident orcas has been rather alarming. Nearly a third of the whales in the three pods are listed in “poor” condition — the lowest of five defined physical states, according to the latest report from the research group SR3. Studies have shown that orcas in poor body condition have a greater likelihood of death.

SR3, which stands for SeaLife Response, Rehabilitation and Research, uses drones to photograph and carefully measure the dimensions of each whale to provide an indication of body condition. The latest data to be analyzed, compiled from last summer and fall, show a continuing five-year decline for the whales in J pod.

Another finding from studies of body condition is a relationship between larger Chinook salmon runs and a more robust body condition. Further research might be needed to give some indication about  the importance to the whales of chum and coho runs in the fall after most Chinook have moved out of Puget Sound and into the rivers.

“One of the big take home messages is that the pods need to be considered individually,” noted Holly Fearnbach, marine mammal research director for SR3.

Since each pod and subpod often go to different places at different times, it only makes sense that their success in finding abundant food supplies will vary among the groups. Their individual and group health depends on the totality of their experiences, with pregnant females at increased risk if they don’t get enough food.

Although we often think of northern resident killer whales being more robust than southern residents, that may not be the case, Holly told me. It appears that a shortage of salmon may be affecting both northern and southern residents to varying degrees.

In the July post to Our Water Ways, I reported on a new study that employed a computer model to predict a 4.7 percent decrease in the southern resident orca population by 2050 if current conditions continue. On the other hand, if all Chinook runs were to double, the orca population could grow by 9 percent in the next 25 years, the study concluded. Other scenarios also are considered in the paper published in Social Science Research Network.

One bright spot in the southern resident census is that eight of the ten calves born since 2020 and alive today are females. That’s a reversal of the trend from 2010 to 2015, when only three females were born among 13 calves alive today.

In a healthy population, the ratio of males to females would be about equal, Michael said. But in a population struggling to survive, the number of females becomes a kind of bottleneck, because they cannot produce more than one calf every 18 months or so — and many of those offspring do not survive.

Killer whale travels

Every year at this time, the southern resident orcas, J pod in particular, can be expected to visit Central Puget Sound to hunt for chum salmon. Chum and to a lesser extent coho are the most abundant salmon in Puget Sound except for odd years, like this one, when pink salmon head into South Sound in large numbers. Southern resident orcas are known to consume chum and coho, according to studies, but pinks are mostly ignored.

Although the whales are not in Puget Sound as I post this blog entry, J pod was in the San Juan Islands last week, based on calls heard on a hydrophone, and K pod was spotted in the islands yesterday, according to reports on Orca Network, which keeps track of whale movements. In September, J pod visited Puget Sound for 11 days, and most of the pod even ventured into the southernmost portion of the Sound, where orcas had not been seen since the capture days in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Their path into the far south started on Sept. 19, when J pod made it to the southern edge of Vashon Island. One group of orcas  turned back north to circle the island through Colvos Passage. But most of the whales continued south, crossing under the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, traversing Fox Island and turning into Carr Inlet, where they spent the night. The following day, they left Carr Inlet, passed McNeil Island and approached Anderson Island before heading north past the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and eventually leaving Puget Sound through Admiralty Inlet.

“It was an incredible visit from J Pod,” Orca Network declared on its sighting page. (See Sept. 24 entry.) “Many people over the course of several days were treated to magical encounters from all across the shores of inland Puget Sound. With the discovery of a new calf, early season Point Robinson passes, and J Pod having not been documented south of the Tacoma Narrows in several decades makes this visit one that will be remembered for a very long time to come.”

The whale’s travels were documented with sightings from many observers on the Orca Network Community Facebook page.

During their visit to South Sound, the whales may have found some coho and resident Chinook salmon, but the large chum run was almost entirely yet to arrive. Observers generally reported whales on the move, as opposed to holding patterns typical of foraging.

So why were the whales going beyond their normal route of travel? Were they looking for salmon because they could not find them anywhere else, or had they been consuming enough salmon elsewhere to provide them extra energy for exploration?

“We ask similar questions all the time about the whales moving between Swiftsure (on the coast) and the San Juan Islands,” Michael Weiss wrote in an email. “Do they make their way in here because the fishing suddenly gets good in this area, or because the fishing gets bad out at Swiftsure?”

Michael said he tends to believe that the whales follow the best “gradients” of increasing fish as they move along. Perhaps the substantial coho run this year set up unusual gradients that determined their travels into South Puget Sound, he added.

State and tribal salmon managers predicted a Puget Sound coho run this year that is 13 percent above the 10-year-average, somewhat on par with last year’s coho run. For Central and South Puget Sound, this year’s coho run was expected to be 6 percent higher than last year’s.

Monika Wieland Shields, director of Orca Behavior Institute, said southern residents are more predictable than Bigg’s (transient) killer whales, but they are prone to unexpected travels.

“Recent examples for J pod include Quartermaster Harbor off Vashon, Saanich Inlet near Sidney B.C., and Johns Pass in the San Juan Islands,” she said in an email. “With such a socially and behaviorally complex animal, I think it’s nearly impossible to divine what might motivate them to do one specific thing; it’s only over time that we can start looking for patterns and possible correlations that might be guiding some of what they do.”

Last year, L pod visited Whidbey Island’s Penn Cove for the first time since seven whales were captured there in 1970, as I described in Our Water Ways.

From observations of last month’s travels, it doesn’t seem that J pod went south of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in search of food, Monika said. “It sounded like they were primarily socializing while they were in Carr Inlet.”

It may be tempting to believe that J pod has avoided the southern region of Puget Sound for years because of a collective memory of the captures, she continued. “But in reality, we will probably never know for sure what they remember, what they pass on of history from generation to generation, or what inspires them to do something different than they’ve done before. Personally, while of course I’m curious, I also think that’s pretty cool. There’s magic in the unknown.”

2025 fall chum run

Last fall, J pod remained in Puget Sound for 20 days beginning in late October and continuing into November. It was an unusually long stay, probably because of the record number of chum salmon returning to Central and South Puget Sound. The preseason forecast by state and tribal salmon managers included a prediction of 486,562 chum last year, but the final count will be somewhere around 1.2 million, according to Matt Bogaard, the chum, pink and sockeye specialist for Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Data are still being compiled, he noted.

It seems that everything went right for the salmon that came back to spawn last year, Matt told me, from ocean temperatures and food supplies to temperatures and flows in the streams.

We may be seeing another good year for chum, although it is still a little too early to know for sure. The preseason forecast of 730,267 has already been updated to 950,000 as of last week with the run still in its early stages. In-season changes are based on a test fishery at Apple Cove Point near Kingston, where a fishing boat catches salmon using consistent methods.

While chum are now moving into Central Puget Sound, only a few of the fish were moving into the streams last week because of low stream flows, according to Jon Oleyar, a biologist for the Suquamish Tribe who walks along many of the streams on the Kitsap Peninsula to monitor the salmon run. That seems to have changed as a result of heavy rains over the weekend when chum could be seen moving up Chico Creek — one of the most productive chum streams in Puget Sound — and into the tributaries.

“With this recent rain, there are bound to be fish in most of our Puget Sound streams now,” Jon said in an email this morning.

To safely watch chum salmon swimming and spawning in local streams, check out the Salmon Viewing website by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. In addition, experts and trained guides will be on hand this Saturday at select streams in Kitsap County as part of Kitsap Salmon Tours, sponsored by government agencies and nonprofit groups.

If this fall is like previous ones, we should be seeing the orcas again soon as they follow the chum into Puget Sound. A particularly productive spot appears to be an area known as the Possession Triangle, bounded by Kingston, Edmonds and Possession Point at the southern tip of Whidbey Island.

A joint study by the Center for Whale Research and Orca Behavior Institute has just begun in anticipation of the whales’ arrival. The work involves pairing observations of orca behaviors, using drones, with the calls that whales make, as heard on hydrophones. Monika Wieland Shields explains the study briefly on Facebook with an accompanying video.

Based on reports and observations, at least some of the southern residents may be poised to enter Central/South Puget Sound. One can keep up on recent shoreside observations by following Orca Network Community Group on Facebook. I will post an update to this blog entry when the whales move south.