Whale watching enthusiasts never saw killer whales before they arrived in Seattle

A new orca pod is captivating observers in Seattle, making several unexpected appearances in Puget Sound last month.

Three killer whales, never previously recorded in the region, have been seen cruising near the city’s downtown skyline and other parts of the coastline. Their presence delighted whale watchers. Usually you’d see tourists enjoying the iconic scenery, but now it’s being shared with these amazing marine visitors.

“People… are all very happy to see this,” said Hongmin Zheng, who takes photos of whales in his spare time. It took him 10 hours of driving to find the mysterious pod. “It was epic.”

Researchers have kept detailed records of killer whales that frequent the Salish Sea, an area of ​​water between Washington state and Canada, and have identified patches on their fins and saddles, or grayish markings on their flanks.

So it came as a surprise when this pod of three killer whales showed up in Vancouver, British Columbia, in March. These three whales were not listed in local whale catalogs.

Shari Tarantino of the Washington-based Orca Conservation Group said researchers discovered photos of the pod in Alaskan waters last year after conducting several excavations. The pod contains an adult female and her two likely offspring, including a large young adult male.

These are currently designated as T419, T420, and T421. The T stands for “transient” not “tourist.”

Visiting killer whales have something our local whales don’t. It’s a circular scar left when a die-cutting shark latches onto a large animal and cuts off a chunk of it. It was evidence that they had spent time in the open ocean, because that’s where sharks live.

“Their exact origin is not yet known with 100% certainty, but given their appearance and the fact that parts of the Alaskan population are widely distributed in the North Pacific, the leading hypothesis is that they are from Alaska, possibly the Aleutian region,” Tarantino wrote in an email.

As for why these three are thousands of miles away from their home range, Tarantino said they may be on a culinary field trip. Unlike the endangered resident killer whales, which eat salmon, this pod feeds on marine mammals, and the Salish Sea is full of harbor seals, sea lions, and porpoises.

“They quickly became audience favorites,” Tarantino wrote. “People spend their lives hoping to see killer whales from shore, but these three have achieved more than that.”