VICTORIA — The skipper of a whale-watching boat out of Victoria said he’s seen outer-coastal transient orcas just west of Port Angeles and all along the Washington state coast.
“That is an area I’ve found them a lot,” Mark Malleson, skipper for 18 years with Prince of Whales Whale Watching based in Victoria, said Thursday.
“They often are on the American side of the Strait” of Juan de Fuca, he added.
He said he has only rarely documented them further east than Race Rocks.
“They nip into the Juan de Fuca. They’ve discovered it’s an area rich in seals,” he said.
Typically, he sees them out in the middle of the Strait.
“They are probably out there a lot more than we realize,” he added.
This season, Malleson has spotted about a dozen of the coastal orcas, which eat mammals such as seals and sea lions, in comparison with the resident orcas of Puget Sound and the Strait, which live primarily on salmon.
Malleson, who also is a research assistant with Fisheries and Oceans Canada and a volunteer at the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island, said he recognized one male orca traveling alone near Port Angeles.
The orca, U-39, used to travel with another orca, U-38, thought to have been his brother.
U-38 has not been seen for at least three years and is presumed dead, Malleson said.
Malleson said he has definitely marked an increase in sightings of the inner-coastal transients in the Strait.
“The whole population is increasing,” he said.
