—
Many whales seen in Pacific Northwest waters aren't strangers — researchers have been photographing, naming, and tracking specific individuals for decades. Tap a whale below to see who they are and, for the Puget Sound orcas, their most recent real sighting history.
Bigg's killer whales travel in small family groups called matrilines, each identified by a catalog code (like T36 or T137A). Sighting data below is pulled live from salishsea.io, a public community sightings project.
A subgroup of about 250 gray whales, called the Pacific Coast Feeding Group, skip the trip to Arctic waters each summer and instead feed along the Oregon coast — some in the very same cove, year after year. Bios adapted from IndividuWhale, a project of Oregon State University's GEMM Lab.