There were a lot of whales here this January and the winter months are a great time to see them in the Salish Sea. On this episode we talk about our January encounters and who has been present in the Salish Sea this winter. We also discuss how this was not always the case in the Salish Sea and how the old information persists that whale presence is predominantly May - September. But with the increase in both the Bigg's killer whale and humpback populations, and the changing patterns of Southern Resident killer whale presence in the inland waters, whales can be seen in the Salish Sea year-round.

While Sara was in Australia with the Bremer Canyon killer whales in January, Jeff is joined by frequent guests Monika Wieland Shields from the Orca Behavior Institute and April Ryan, a marine naturalist and captain with Maya's Legacy Whale Watching. 

We also announced special, limited availability collaborative whale watching tours with the Orca Behavior Institute and Maya's Legacy Whale Watching. These tours will be available on limited dates in July, 2026. 

Designed for those who want to experience, learn about and support whale research, this unique tour will give you the chance to learn directly from a killer whale scientist. This tour follows the same half-day format as Maya's Legacy Whale Watching's daily half-day tours, with an added research perspective on board. A guest naturalist from the Orca Behavior Institute will share how scientists observe whales in the field and how observations made on the water contribute to long-term research efforts. 

These tours are limited in availability: 

If you are interested, you can contact Maya's Legacy Whale Watching to reserve seats.

We also responded to several listener emails regarding the music at the beginning and end of each episode. Shout out to Other Animal who created original music for After the Breach Podcast. Curious which of our listeners knew there were whale vocals in there? Anyone interested in hearing the full version of the music? Hit us up by email.

If you are enjoying listening to our podcast, please share this with your friends, follow/subscribe, and leave us feedback/reviews wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you’d like to join Jeff and Sara on a whale watching tour, please reach out to Maya's Legacy Whale Watching to book! 

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. Please send us feedback or questions at [email protected]. And remember, stay safe out there.

T19C, "Spouter," breaching during a sea lion hunt in January mid-day lighting. Photo by Jeff Friedman, Maya's Legacy Whale Watching.

Part 1: How We Got Here

In this first episode of our multi-part series on Southern Resident killer whales, we step back to look at the full historical arc — from the pre-capture population, through the capture era, to the endangered listing that shapes recovery efforts happening today.

This episode sets the foundation for the entire series. Before we can talk about recovery strategies and efforts, we need to understand how the Southern Resident killer whales became endangered in the first place.

We discuss what we know about the pre-capture population, the capture era and its lasting impacts, recovery and then decline, risk factors and the endangered species listing.

Coming up in Part 2 we will dig into actions that have been taken over the last 20 years since the endangered species listing, how much it has cost and the results (or lack of) for Southern Resident recovery.

If you are enjoying listening to our podcast, please share this with your friends, follow/subscribe, and leave us feedback/reviews wherever you listen to podcasts!

And if you’d like to join Jeff and Sara on a whale watching tour in 2026, please check out to Maya’s Legacy Whale Watching to book! 

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. Please send us feedback or questions at [email protected].

And remember, stay safe out there.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Returning guest Jared Towers from Bay Cetology joins us on this episode of After the Breach Podcast to discuss a paper he co-authored in the Journal of Comparative Psychology, "Testing the Waters: Attempts by Wild Killer Whales (Orcinus orca) to Provision People (Homo sapiens)."

Before getting into the paper, we talk a bit about the recent release of the updated Bigg's killer whale identification catalog! This is the first updated catalog since 2019 and hosts Sara and Jeff talk with Jared about the release.

We move into the discussion about Jared's paper, which made international media when it was published earlier this year. What does it mean to provision people? What populations of killer whales are doing this? Why might they be doing this, what are possible motivations? What types of prey are they sharing? We discuss these questions and more with Jared, and we all share some examples of this from of our own experiences on the water with killer whales. 

If you are enjoying listening to our podcast, please share this with your friends, follow/subscribe, and leave us feedback/reviews wherever you listen to podcasts!

And if you’d like to join Jeff and Sara on a whale watching tour in 2026, please check out to Maya’s Legacy Whale Watching to book! 

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. Please send us feedback or questions at [email protected].

And remember, stay safe out there.

Links from this episode:

It's time for our annual recap of whale sightings from the past year. Frequent guest Monika Wieland Shields, co-founder and director of the Orca Behavior Institute, joins hosts Sara and Jeff for a discussion of 2025 whale sightings, observations, and trends.   

Find out how we did on our predictions from last year's recap, Episode 36. Download the new Bigg's killer whale ID guide and follow along to find out which matrilines were here more and less in 2025 than the previous year.

The episode covers the sightings trends for Bigg's killer whales, Northern and Southern Resident killer whales, and humpbacks. We talk about numbers from tours with Maya's Legacy Whale Watching as well as the broader numbers collected by Orca Behavior Institute. 

Monika, Sara and Jeff also share their predictions for 2026, and as usual, weave in and out of other whale topics along the way.

If you are enjoying listening to our podcast, please share this with your friends, follow/subscribe, and leave us feedback/reviews wherever you listen to podcasts!

And if you’d like to join Jeff and Sara on a whale watching tour over the holiday season or in 2026, please check out to Maya’s Legacy Whale Watching to book! 

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. Please send us feedback or questions at [email protected].

And remember, stay safe out there.

Links from this episode:

Photos mentioned in this episode:

T19s in winter lighting. Photo by Jeff Friedman

We've mentioned him on many episodes. He's a young and fascinating whale, a social butterfly and sometimes a troublemaker. On this episode of After the Breach, Jeff and Sara are joined once again by Monika Wieland Shield of the Orca Behavior Institute to talk about T65A5 “Indy”.

This young male has been dispersed since he was five years old and we talk about his history, his family, and some of his more interesting predicaments. We always ask the question, where and with whom will Indy be next? He was invited to join this episode of the podcast to tell his story but we did not receive a reply. 

After our discussion about Indy, we chat about some of the latest summer sightings here in the Salish Sea!

If you are enjoying listening to our podcast, please share this with your friends, follow/subscribe, and leave us feedback/reviews wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you’d like to join Jeff and Sara on a whale watching tour, please reach out to Maya’s Legacy Whale Watching to book! 

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. Please send us feedback or questions at [email protected]. And remember, stay safe out there.

Links from this episode:

Photos:

T65A5 Indy in 2014. Photo by Sara Hysong Shimazu

T65A5 Indy Sept 2025. Photo by April Ryan, Maya's Legacy Whale Watching.

This episode of After the Breach is a special one—it was our first recording with a live audience! In celebration of the Orca Behavior Institute’s 10th Anniversary we joined Monika Wieland Shields and Michael Weiss at the Center for Whale Research’s Outreach Center with some of OBI’s biggest fans in attendance.

We talk about bad whale movies (courtesy of Michael), we learn about OBI’s history, research, and plans for the future, and of course, we take audience questions! It was a lot of fun and there were a lot of laughs!

If you are enjoying listening to our podcast, please share this with your friends, follow/subscribe, and leave us feedback/reviews wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you’d like to join Jeff and Sara on a whale watching tour, please reach out to Maya’s Legacy Whale Watching to book! 

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. Please send us feedback or questions at [email protected]. And remember, stay safe out there.

Joining us on the latest episode of After the Breach Podcast we welcome back Dr. Cindy Elliser from PacMam Research to talk to us about a very important, non-cetacean that inhabits the Salish Sea—the harbor seal!

These pinnipeds are an important species, both as prey and as predators. We talk about PacMam’s latest paper about site fidelity, and also learn some interesting facts about these charismatic creatures. We also get into seal politics and discuss why seals get a bad rap, why this is not deserved, and how culling pinnipeds will not accomplish what some think it might (and could be devastating to Bigg’s killer whales).

If you are enjoying listening to our podcast, please share this with your friends, follow/subscribe, and leave us feedback/reviews wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you’d like to join Jeff and Sara on a whale watching tour, please reach out to Maya’s Legacy Whale Watching to book! 

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. Please send us feedback or questions at [email protected]. And remember, stay safe out there.

Links from this episode:

Joining us on this episode is Trevor Branch, a professor at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington, to discuss his paper, "Most “flight” baleen whale species are acoustically cryptic to killer whales, unlike “fight” species." The discussion details how baleen whales can be categorized as either "fight" species or "flight" species, based on their responses to killer whale attacks, their vocalizations and other behaviors. We discuss which baleen whales belong in the flight club and which fall into the flight club and why. 

He also shares with us information from another paper he authored on a related topic that unravels the mystery of the missing blue whale calves. 

If you are enjoying listening to our podcast, please share this with your friends, follow/subscribe, and leave us feedback/reviews wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you’d like to join Jeff and Sara on a whale watching tour, please reach out to Maya’s Legacy Whale Watching to book! 

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. Please send us feedback or questions at [email protected]. And remember, stay safe out there.

Links from this episode:

March was an incredible month for whale sightings in the Salish Sea, with killer whales encountered on almost 90% of our tours with Maya's Legacy Whale Watching. On this episode of After the Breach Podcast, Sara and Jeff share several stories about the whales they encountered in March, including a brand new calf (T46B3A) with the T46Bs. They are part of the amazing legacy of T46, and Sara and Jeff tell her story in this episode. Also included is a discussion of the T49As and T19s and their frequent spring encounters hunting sea lions in the San Juan Islands. The episode also includes other killer whales encountered throughout the month.

If you are enjoying listening to our podcast, please share this with your friends, follow/subscribe, and leave us feedback/reviews wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you’d like to join Jeff and Sara on a whale watching tour, please reach out to Maya’s Legacy Whale Watching to book! 

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. Please send us feedback or questions at [email protected]. And remember, stay safe out there.

Links from this episode:

Photos & videos from this episode:

T46B3A. Photo by Sara Shimazu

T46B3A. Photo by Sara Shimazu

T46B3A. Photo by Sara Shimazu

Often encountered on the water, Harbor Porpoise are the smallest cetacean in the Salish Sea and can be very underappreciated. Joining Sara and Jeff to share incredible information and research about these unique mammals is Cindy Elliser, the founder and research director of Pacific Mammal Research (PacMam). 

We discuss findings about photo identification and site fidelity from her recent published research, linked below, as well as other fascinating information such as harbor porpoise breeding, feeding, wake surfing and more.  

If you are enjoying listening to our podcast, please share this with your friends, follow/subscribe, and leave us feedback/reviews wherever you listen to podcasts! And if you’d like to join Jeff and Sara on a whale watching tour, please reach out to Maya’s Legacy Whale Watching to book! 

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. Please send us feedback or questions at [email protected]. And remember, stay safe out there.

Links from this episode:

Photos from this episode:

All photos by Cindy Elliser, Pacific Mammal Research