Presentation Abstract
Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKWs) or orcas, Orcinus orca, are resident year round in the Salish Sea, the inland waterways of Washington State and Southern British Columbia. The Whale Museum (TWM) has been collecting opportunistic sightings reports on SRKWs since 1976 with a goal of providing managers and regulatory agencies with reliable spatial data on SRKWs. Information in this database comes from five identified killer whale sighting sources and is systematically evaluated for accuracy before integration into the data set. To date, TWM sighting database has documented a total of 83,428 SRKW sightings in the Salish Sea. Sightings are concentrated in a few key hot spots with an overall pattern of consistent presence in the Central Salish Sea during the summer months and an increasing presence in Puget Sound Proper during the fall and early winter months. A notable shift in SRKW presence in Puget Sound in the late nineties was possibly driven by increased foraging on fall chum salmon after a group of L pod whales became trapped in Dyes Inlet in 1997. The Whale Museum’s dataset highlights the importance of long-term monitoring and shows how opportunistic datasets can be valuable tools for illuminating long-term spatial and temporal patterns.
Session Title
Cumulative Effects on Southern Resident Killer Whales (Orcinus orca)
Keywords
Orcas, SRKWs, Killer Whale sightings
Conference Track
SSE9: Transboundary Management and Policy
Conference Name
Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference (2018 : Seattle, Wash.)
Document Type
Event
SSEC Identifier
SSE9-25
Start Date
4-4-2018 1:45 PM
End Date
4-4-2018 2:00 PM
Type of Presentation
Oral
Genre/Form
presentations (communicative events)
Contributing Repository
Digital content made available by University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University.
Subjects – Topical (LCSH)
Killer whale--Monitoring--Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.)
Subjects – Names (LCNAF)
Whale Museum (Friday Harbor, Wash.)
Geographic Coverage
Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.)
Rights
This resource is displayed for educational purposes only and may be subject to U.S. and international copyright laws. For more information about rights or obtaining copies of this resource, please contact University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225-9103, USA (360-650-7534; heritage.resources@wwu.edu) and refer to the collection name and identifier. Any materials cited must be attributed to the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference Records, University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University.
Type
Text
Language
English
Format
application/pdf
Included in
Fresh Water Studies Commons, Marine Biology Commons, Natural Resources and Conservation Commons, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology Commons
Sightings of Southern Resident killer whales in the Salish Sea 1976-2014
Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKWs) or orcas, Orcinus orca, are resident year round in the Salish Sea, the inland waterways of Washington State and Southern British Columbia. The Whale Museum (TWM) has been collecting opportunistic sightings reports on SRKWs since 1976 with a goal of providing managers and regulatory agencies with reliable spatial data on SRKWs. Information in this database comes from five identified killer whale sighting sources and is systematically evaluated for accuracy before integration into the data set. To date, TWM sighting database has documented a total of 83,428 SRKW sightings in the Salish Sea. Sightings are concentrated in a few key hot spots with an overall pattern of consistent presence in the Central Salish Sea during the summer months and an increasing presence in Puget Sound Proper during the fall and early winter months. A notable shift in SRKW presence in Puget Sound in the late nineties was possibly driven by increased foraging on fall chum salmon after a group of L pod whales became trapped in Dyes Inlet in 1997. The Whale Museum’s dataset highlights the importance of long-term monitoring and shows how opportunistic datasets can be valuable tools for illuminating long-term spatial and temporal patterns.
