Orcas never seen before in Seattle delight whale watchers with a visit

Seattle — When tourists travel to Seattle, it’s common to take in the Space Needle and the downtown skyline from Puget Sound.

It’s an itinerary that a newly arrived pod of killer whales appears to be following too.

Three orcas that had not previously been recorded in the Seattle area have delighted whale watchers with several visits just off downtown this past month. They've also cruised by other shorelines in the region.

“People ... are all very happy to see this,” said Hongming Zheng, who photographs whales in his spare time. It took him 10 hours of driving to find the mysterious pod. “It was epic.”

Researchers keep detailed records of killer whales that frequent the Salish Sea, the waters between Washington state and Canada, by identifying their fins and saddle patches — the grayish markings on their sides.

So it was a surprise when this pod of three orcas showed up in Vancouver, British Columbia, in March. The three weren’t in any catalogs of local whales.

After some digging, researchers located photos of the pod in Alaska waters last year, said Shari Tarantino of the Washington-based Orca Conservancy. The pod includes an adult female and what are believed to be her two offspring, including a large young adult male.

They have now been designated as T419, T420 and T421 — the T standing for “transient,” not “tourist.”

The visiting orcas have something that local whales don’t: circular scars left by cookie-cutter sharks, which latch on to larger animals and slice a chunk off them. It was evidence they've spent time in the open ocean, because that's where the sharks live.

“We don’t know their exact origin with 100% certainty yet, but the leading hypothesis is that they’re from Alaska, possibly the Aleutian region, given their appearance and the fact that some Alaskan populations range widely across the North Pacific,” Tarantino wrote in an email.

As for why these three are thousands of miles from their home range? Tarantino said it's possible they're on a culinary field trip. This pod feeds on sea mammals — unlike the endangered salmon-eating resident orcas — and there are plenty of harbor seals, sea lions and porpoises in the Salish Sea.

“They have quickly become a crowd favorite,” Tarantino wrote. “People spend a lifetime hoping to see a killer whale from shore, and these three have more than delivered.”