Saving Seafood

Southern resident K pod falls to lowest number since counts began

October 15, 2025 — Just 74 southern resident orcas remain, as of the latest count by the Center for Whale Research. The count has hovered around this low point for several years.

The 2024 census tallied 73 orcas in the southern resident J, K and L pods. In the next census period, which ran from July 1, 2024, to July 1, 2025, four births were documented. Two of the calves and one adult died.

It’s a mixed story, said Michael Weiss, research director with the Center for Whale Research. J pod increased by two, L pod was stable and K pod declined. K pod is at its lowest point since the survey began, with just 14 orcas.

“What we had was a bunch of calves being born and half of those calves dying, and you can’t sustain a population if you can’t get calves to be born and survive their first couple years of life,” Weiss said. “That’s all tied to the state of the moms, and the moms need fish.”

The endangered southern residents, a fish-eating population that can be seen along the West Coast of the U.S. and B.C., were listed for protection under the federal Endangered Species Act 20 years ago. They face multiple threats, from a lack of their primary food, Chinook salmon, to underwater noise from vessels that makes it harder to hunt, as well as pollution and inbreeding.

The release of the latest census comes as the Trump administration has proposed rolling back protections for endangered species and blown up a Northwest agreement over dam operations in the Columbia Basin to help restore salmon.

L128 was born to first-time mom L90 in September 2024. L128 was seen looking thin in October 2024, and was not seen again.

In late December, J41 gave birth to female J62, and Tahlequah, also known as J35, had female J61.

J61 was identified on Christmas Eve, and confirmed dead on New Year’s Eve. Tahlequah carried her body for at least 11 days in what is understood by some scientists to be an indication of grief.

Read the full article at the The Seattle Times 

Feds start review of endangered Southern Resident orcas

April 27, 2021 — NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service says it’s starting a five-year status review of the Southern Resident orcas.

NOAA Fisheries published a notice in the Federal Register about the status review last week, The Skagit Valley Herald reported. The whales were listed as endangered in 2005 under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Since the 1990s, the number of orcas in the three family groups — called J, K and L pods — that make up the population has dropped from the high 90s into the 70s.

The orcas, also called killer whales, live along the West Coast and frequent the Salish Sea.

Since 2005, the orca population has decreased from 88 orcas to a recent low of 72, according to the Center for Whale Research and NOAA Fisheries. As of February, the population was estimated at 75 with some recently identified calves.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

‘What extinction looks like’: A young orca’s presumed death cuts endangered whale population to 74

September 17, 2018 — Ever since birth, she had to fight to live.

The deep scratches along her back and dorsal fin not only earned her the nickname “Scarlet,” but may also indicate that the young female orca, J50, came into the world through harrowing means: Pulled out of her mother by other whales using their mouths.

Still, she survived, and for a while restored hope that she could help her pod — part of an embattled population of southern resident killer whales known to frequent the waters near Washington state — to rebuild their numbers.

But Thursday, researchers announced grim news.

“J50 is missing and now presumed dead,” according to a news release from the Center for Whale Research, a group based out of San Juan Island that has studied the southern resident killer whales for more than 40 years. The last known sighting of the 3-year-old orca was on Sept. 7, researchers said.

Without J50, the population is now down to 74 members — their numbers reached nearly 100 in 1995 — and many of its existing female members are nearing the age where they will no longer be able to reproduce, Ken Balcomb, founder and principal investigator of the Center for Whale Research, told The Washington Post in July. The pod has not produced viable offspring in three years.

Read the full story at The Washington Post 

Orca population hits 30-year low in Puget Sound

July 11, 2018 — The Southern Resident orca pods are in a tough spot — literally.

Their primary food source is dying off; the Trans Mountain Pipeline is expanding, which will increase the number of tankers trucking through the orcas’ habitat by seven times, among other exposure risks like noise and spills.

And now comes the latest spot of bad news: For the last three years not one calf has been born to the shrinking pods of the black-and-white killer whales in the Pacific Northwest, resulting in a 30-year low in orca population.

The annual census of Puget Sound’s resident orcas found that just 75 killer whales, across the three Southern Resident pods (J, K, and L), are still swimming through the Pacific Northwest waters. The J pod has 23 members, while K has 18, and L has 34.

In addition to finding no new births of Southern Residents, the census reported two missing and presumed dead members, 23-year-old Crewser (also known as L-92), and a 2-year-old calf named Sonic (J-52).

Read the full story at KOMO News