Orca sightings have surged in SoCal. What experts believe is keeping the whales here

SAN DIEGO (KSWB) — There has seemingly been dozens of orca sightings in the waters off the Southern California coast over the past few weeks.

Whale watching groups from San Diego to Los Angeles — and in at least one instance as far north as Oxnard — started spotting the creatures in early December, as they swim and hunt dolphins around their boats.

It has thrilled onlookers and whale watching operators alike who are witnessing a rare surge in activity for a species that had not been spotted in Southern California waters with this frequency for about two years.

So, why have they suddenly started spending so much time off the coast of Southern California? Whale experts say it is hard to know exactly.

There are at least three different types of killer whales that are known to swim through California’s waters: transient, offshore and resident whales. Transients and residents tend to keep close to the coast, but only the transients are known to feed on marine mammal species.

All three types of killer whales are known to travel where the food takes them, with pods of transients considered to have larger home ranges — or distances of ocean where they roam — compared to the others in order to follow their larger prey.

“They’re unpredictable,” Mary Black, director of the California Killer Whale Project, told FOX5SanDiego.com. “They’ll go to a spot and catch a sea lion and then move on to a different spot. Sometimes they might hang around an area for a couple days.”

The pod of whales, which consists of eight adults and two juveniles, at the center of all the sightings recently in Southern California are believed to be eastern tropical Pacific orcas, a subgroup of the transient ecotype with a home range that centers the warm waters off the coast of Central America. Ventura County is considered the northernmost edge of the type’s range.

As Black explained, the eastern tropical Pacific orcas that migrate through Southern California typically feed on dolphins that hang out in the area. Bigger pods of the mammals will draw out the killer whales relatively infrequently, occurring every year or two.

“They seem to specialize on the larger schools of common dolphins, they’re hunting them,” Black said. “Then they eventually work their way back south again, down to Mexico.”

What is unusual about this pod, however, is that it has hung around the area for several weeks now, swimming back and forth between San Diego and Los Angeles at least once.

“The fact that the killer whales are here over the course of more than two weeks is very rare,” said Jessica Rodriguez, education and communications manager at Newport Landing & Davey’s Locker Whale Watching. “I don’t remember this happening at least (since) 2016 — that it has been this consistent.”

They were first spotted by whale watching boats in the area of Palos Verdes on Dec. 11, before moving up to Oxnard on Dec. 15 and then down to San Diego around Dec. 18. A few days later, they were again spotted farther north on Dec. 22 before returning to San Diego on Dec. 25.

One of the juveniles was seen swimming alongside an adult in a video (below) of the Dec. 22 sighting in Orange County.

A video of the second sighting in San Diego on Dec. 25 can be viewed below. In the video, a dolphin the orcas were hunting can be seen jumping out of the water several times while a whale bites at it.

Since Dec. 11, Harbor Breeze, a Southern California whale watching operator, has counted 61 orca sightings. To put this in perspective, the more common whales seen on these trips — fin, humpback and blue — have tallies of 468, 356 and 210 for the year, respectively.

Before these appearances, it had been about two years since eastern tropical Pacific killer whales have been seen up in Southern California.

“My suspicion is that with the warming waters that we’ve had this season going into El Nino is that these warm water killer whales have decided to push their range up a little bit more to expand the range of what they’re able to feed on,” Rodriguez said.

In several of the recent sightings, the pod also made the incredible move of swimming right near the boats of whale watchers, actively hiding under the boats in the hunt or using them as a way to block themselves from their prey’s echolocation.

“Obviously, it’s for feeding and they’re very successful at it the few times we’ve seen their hunts. They’ve killed several (dolphins) in one two-hour (whale watching) trip,” Rodriguez said.

“It’s mind-blowing to see them hunt and communicate with one another to coordinate feeding attacks. We’ve even watched them have the babies lead the hunt,” she continued. “It’s something that you see on BBC and Animal Planet that you never think you’re going to see out on the water, because of the rarity.”

It is unclear whether the pod will continue hanging around Southern California while the conditions continue to be ideal for the pod between successful hunts and warmer water. Rodriguez says they could stick around into the early months of the year “as long as it’s productive for them to be here.”

While it’s never guaranteed, she encourages those who want to try to see the majestic creatures in the wild to follow whale watching operators on social media to see where killer whales are spotted and then get out on the next available tour in that area.

“These are rare life occurrences that are like once-in-a-lifetime sightings,” Rodriguez said. “We want to do our best to protect our oceans for future generations and some of the better ways to do this is by getting out and appreciating them in the wild … The urgency of their conservation efforts is really forefront of the things that we think about while we’re out there, observing them.”