Record/Orcas of the Pacific Coast/Southern Resident Orcas
01 — Orcas of the Pacific Coast
Southern Resident OrcasSouthern Resident Orcas
A fish-eating population of roughly seventy-four whales, and the most closely watched orcas on Earth.
Record
As of 1 July 2026- Individuals
- 74
- Trend 2016–26
- −4
- Listing
- Endangered
- Primary prey
- Chinook
- First catalogued
- 1976
Assessment
The Southern Residents are three families — J, K and L pod — that move through the Salish Sea and along the outer coast from California to southeast Alaska. Every individual is catalogued, photographed and known by an alphanumeric name. Researchers can tell them apart on sight from the shape of the dorsal fin and the grey saddle patch behind it.
They are salmon specialists, and overwhelmingly Chinook specialists. That dietary narrowness is the whole story of their decline: when Chinook runs fail, the whales have no fallback. They do not switch to seals. They do not switch to herring. They go hungry.
The population has hovered in the seventies for years, which sounds stable and is not. A group this small has almost no buffer. A handful of failed pregnancies or a single bad year can undo a decade of slow recovery.
Key points
6 observations- 01Catalogued individually since the 1970s
- 02Three matrilineal pods: J, K and L
- 03Diet is roughly 80% Chinook salmon
- 04Listed as endangered under the ESA
- 05Females can live into their eighties
- 06Calves stay with their mothers for life