They came together Sunday evening not far from Port Townsend. Why, no one can say for sure, except the participants themselves — and no humans speak their language.
The participants were the Northwest’s endangered orcas. All 74 of them gathered into what researchers call a superpod — a sort of all-inclusive family reunion for every member of the southern resident killer whale population.
Before sunrise Monday morning, whale fans around the region were listening to the orcas’ distinctive calls captured by an underwater microphone near Edmonds that plays live 24/7 at orcasound.net.
In early morning light, observers on shore in Edmonds spotted a handful of pointy black dorsal fins just north of the cross-sound ferry lanes.
Just before 9 a.m., crew of the Washington State Ferry Spokane saw orcas near the Edmonds ferry terminal and sent out an alert to all mariners within 10 nautical miles so they might slow down, change course, or at least be on the lookout to avoid hitting a whale.
Washington State Ferries protocol is to slow down when the orcas are within half a nautical mile and stop within a quarter mile.
Boat noise, which grows louder with a vessel’s speed, can block orcas from echolocating their salmon meal in the inky depths.
Researchers with the Orca Behavior Institute and the Center for Whale Research headed out with small boats and research permits to document the whales from closer than the usual 1,000-yard buffer that all other boats must maintain.
They soon confirmed that it was a true superpod, with all 74 members of J, K, and L pods present.
At least in the inland waters where human onlookers abound, superpods are rare, with this one the first of 2025 in the Salish Sea of Washington and British Columbia, according to the Orca Behavior Institute.
Another superpod was reported in July in the Pacific Ocean at Swiftsure Bank, about 10 miles west of Cape Flattery, the Northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula.
“When prey was more abundant in the Salish Sea in the summer, we used to get more superpods,” researcher Monika Wieland Shields with the Orca Behavior Institute said in an email.
She said the superpods’ purpose isn’t entirely clear.
They sometimes form after a new orca is born or just when there’s enough salmon in one spot to feed the whole population.
“We do know that they often do a lot of socializing between pods when they're all together, and presumably some of it is for mating purposes,” Shields said.
“Saw a fair amount of sexual social behavior yesterday!” orca researcher Deborah Giles with the SeaDoc Society said by text on Tuesday. “Yesterday and today were amazing in the water with everyone!!”
These all-inclusive family reunions are important for the endangered orcas.
They let the whales breed across their three different pods and boost the small, inbred population’s waning genetic diversity.
One shore-based whale watcher with a powerful spotting scope reported seeing Giles’ dog Eba on the bow of a research boat off Whidbey Island Monday.
Giles said her specially trained dog pointed out four floating samples of orca scat, used to analyze the whales’ diets, health, and pollution levels.
Around 1 p.m. Monday, some members of L Pod were observed surfing the wake of the ONE Cygnus, a 1,200-foot, Japanese-flagged container ship bound for Tacoma.
In the program’s first two weeks in September, 40% of container ships, car carriers, and cruise ships did not slow down to the suggested 17 miles per hour.
Tuesday morning, the superpod was spotted in Seattle’s Elliott Bay.
A pedestrian ferry from Bremerton to Seattle stopped to avoid a possible collision between the speedy catamaran and the numerous orcas.
Onlookers gathered at beaches and bluffs with binoculars, phones, telephoto lenses, and spotting scopes in Seattle, Bainbridge Island, Shoreline, Edmonds, the Kitsap Peninsula, Whidbey Island, and Port Townsend to catch glimpses of the region’s most closely watched wild mammals.
While the orcas seemed to socialize a fair amount on Monday, they were more dispersed on Tuesday — small groups scattered miles apart — and appeared to be on the hunt for salmon.
“It's wonderful that now there are apparently enough salmon available in inland Puget Sound waters to invite a superpod in for a visit,” Stephanie Raymond with the nonprofit Orca Network said in an email.
Summer and fall are usually the orcas’ best months for finding enough food, according to researcher Holly Fearnbach with the nonprofit Sealife Response, Rehabilitation, and Research.
The orcas tend to lose weight in winter and spring, when meals of large, fatty Chinook are especially hard to find.
Drone images of southern residents taken between July and November 2024 revealed that 22 out of 73 orcas were in “poor body condition,” the term for whales that are exceptionally thin.
Around sunset on Tuesday, the superpod was northbound off Whidbey Island, possibly heading for the San Juan Islands or Canadian waters.
On Wednesday, Canadian observers saw J Pod headed west past Sooke, B.C., about 15 miles west of Victoria, apparently headed out the Strait of Juan de Fuca for the open Pacific Ocean.
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.