Transient Meet up in the Strait of Georgia

August 19, 2026

On August 19 our team had report of killer whales travelling north east from TEḴTEḴSEN (East Point, Saturna Island) early in the morning. We set out towards the Strait of Georgia to see if we could catch up with them. With help from our land based colleagues from SFU, we located the whales in the Strait and documented ID photos as they travelled quickly north east towards ĆEL,ȽTENEM (Point Roberts on the Mainland). We identified these whales as members of the T049As. After taking photos of the whales we let them carry on vessel free and headed towards Belle Chain Islets for compliance monitoring of the Rockfish Conservation Area.
There were no vessels fishing in the RCA so we travelled through X̱IX̱EYES (Boat Passage) into Winter Cove and continued south into Plumper Sound. On our way home we backtracked through X̱IX̱EYES and came across ecotourism vessels in the Strait of Georgia. We travelled over to see what they were watching and monitor marine mammal regulation compliance. To our surprise, we saw that the whales we saw in the morning had met up with multiple other pods and there were over 20 Bigg’s killer whales spread through the Strait of Georgia!
This large group of whales included members of the T049As, T035s, T036As, T100s and, T063 and T065.

All photos are taken with a 200-600 zoom lens.