Who's out there, and where to stand

Orcinus orca — J, K and L pods · Endangered (ESA, listed 2005)

These are the salmon eaters — a single population of fewer than eighty animals split into three pods, and one of the most closely studied groups of wild animals anywhere. They are chinook specialists: NOAA's diet work puts chinook at the great majority of their identified prey during spring and summer, which is exactly why their recovery is tangled up with salmon recovery. They are loud, socially dense, and travel in spread lines of family groups; matrilines stay together for life. The Center for Whale Research runs the annual census, so the current count is a published number, not a guess.

When

Historically summer and fall in the San Juans; now scattered through the year

Where

Haro Strait, the west side of San Juan Island, Admiralty Inlet, central Sound

Sources: NOAA Fisheries — Southern Resident killer whale · Center for Whale Research — annual census

Orcinus orca — mammal-eating ecotype · Not listed; sightings increasing

Same species, entirely different animal. Bigg's hunt marine mammals — harbor seals above all, plus sea lions, harbor porpoise and the occasional gray whale calf — and they do it in near silence, because their prey can hear them. They travel in small tight groups of two to six and surface unpredictably, then go quiet for long stretches. Their numbers in the Salish Sea have climbed steadily as seal and sea lion populations recovered after the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The two ecotypes do not interbreed and do not mix.

When

Year-round, and now the orca you're most likely to see here

Where

Everywhere — Saratoga Passage, Possession Sound, Admiralty Inlet, the Camano shoreline

Sources: NOAA Fisheries — killer whale ecotypes · Orca Network — sighting reports

Megaptera novaeangliae · Mexico DPS threatened; Central America DPS endangered

The comeback story. Commercial whaling emptied these waters of humpbacks; they were effectively gone from the Salish Sea for most of the twentieth century and only began returning in numbers in the 2000s. They come to feed — krill and schooling fish like herring — hauling their way north from breeding grounds off Mexico, Central America and Hawai'i. Every animal's fluke underside is a unique pattern, which is how Cascadia Research and the Happywhale community catalog them individually. A humpback that lifts its tail on a dive is handing you its ID.

When

Late spring through fall, peaking in autumn

Where

Strait of Juan de Fuca, Rosario Strait, increasingly into Admiralty Inlet and the Sound

Sources: NOAA Fisheries — humpback whale · Cascadia Research Collective

Eschrichtius robustus · Eastern North Pacific population not listed; monitored after recent die-off years

Most gray whales pass the outer coast on the longest migration of any mammal, Baja lagoons to the Bering and Chukchi Seas. A small, named group peels off into north Puget Sound each spring instead — the whales Cascadia Research has tracked for decades as the 'Sounders.' They come for ghost shrimp, rolling onto one side in shallow water and suctioning mouthfuls of sediment off the tideflats, leaving oval feeding pits you can find at low tide. It's a handful of returning individuals, identified by their skin mottling, and they are the reason a Camano beach walk in April sometimes comes with a blow offshore.

When

Roughly March through May — this is the local season worth planning around

Where

Right here: Saratoga Passage, Port Susan, the flats off Camano, Whidbey and Hat Island

Sources: NOAA Fisheries — gray whale · Cascadia Research — Puget Sound gray whales

Balaenoptera acutorostrata · Not listed

The quiet one. Minkes are the smallest baleen whale here, usually alone, and they work the same productive banks year after year lunging through schools of herring and sand lance. They give you almost nothing: a fast, low surfacing, a blow you often miss entirely, and then they're gone for several minutes in a direction you didn't predict. Spotting one is mostly patience and a flat sea.

When

Mostly summer into early fall

Where

San Juan Islands banks, Haro and Rosario Straits — less common in the inner Sound

Sources: NOAA Fisheries — common minke whale

Phocoena phocoena · Not listed; recovered strongly in Puget Sound since the 1990s

Not a whale, and the single most common thing people report as one. Harbor porpoise had largely vanished from Puget Sound by the 1970s and quietly repopulated it over the following decades — one of the region's real conservation wins, and almost nobody noticed. They surface with a small dark triangle and a puff you can hear on a still morning, no splash, no show. If you see something small, fast and flashy with a white flank instead, that's a Dall's porpoise throwing its characteristic rooster tail of spray.

When

Year-round, daily, in front of almost every beach on this list

Where

Saratoga Passage, Port Susan, Possession Sound — often within a few hundred yards of shore

Sources: NOAA Fisheries — harbor porpoise

Phocoenoides dalli · Not listed

Built like a torpedo and colored like a tiny orca, which is why every summer somebody reports a 'baby killer whale.' Dall's are among the fastest small cetaceans in the world and they announce themselves with spray rather than a fin: a hollow cone of water thrown up by the head at speed, the 'rooster tail.' They favor deep, moving water and will bow-ride a ferry for a minute before peeling off.

When

Year-round, most often in the deeper, faster water

Where

Haro and Rosario Straits, Admiralty Inlet, the Strait of Juan de Fuca

Sources: NOAA Fisheries — Dall's porpoise

Lagenorhynchus obliquidens · Not listed

An offshore animal that occasionally decides to come inside, and when it does it does not do it quietly. Groups of dozens to hundreds move fast, leap, and churn the surface white. In the Salish Sea they are a treat rather than a fixture — some years bring several visits, some none at all. If a report describes 'a lot of dolphins going nuts,' this is usually who it was.

When

Irregular — groups wander in for days at a time, mostly fall and winter

Where

Northern inland waters and the Strait; occasional runs deep into the Sound

Sources: NOAA Fisheries — Pacific white-sided dolphin

Balaenoptera physalus · Endangered (ESA)

The second-largest animal that has ever lived, and effectively a coastal-waters rarity here rather than a Salish Sea resident. Fin whales are recovering off Washington's outer coast and turn up in the western Strait now and then; a genuine inland-waters fin whale makes the news. Included because a huge, fast, tall-blowing whale off Neah Bay or Sekiu is a real possibility, and it is not a humpback.

When

Rare, and mostly summer — this is the long-shot entry

Where

Outer coast and the western Strait of Juan de Fuca; very rarely inland

Sources: NOAA Fisheries — fin whale

Phoca vitulina richardii · Not listed; protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act

The animal you will actually see. Harbor seals are the region's most abundant marine mammal and the reason Bigg's orca do so well here. They haul out to rest and thermoregulate, which is normal, not distress. A pup alone on the beach is almost always fine and waiting for its mother — approaching it is what causes abandonment. Keep 100 yards back, keep dogs leashed and away, and call the stranding network rather than intervening.

When

Year-round; pups on Washington beaches roughly June through September

Where

Every beach on this list — rocks, log booms, sandbars and the water right off your boots

Sources: NOAA Fisheries — harbor seal · WDFW — seal pups on the beach

Eumetopias jubatus · Eastern DPS delisted 2013; still MMPA-protected

The big one. Bulls run to a ton, pale tawny and thick-necked, and a haul-out full of them sounds like a construction site from half a mile off. They breed on rookeries in Alaska and British Columbia and spend the off-season working our waters for hake, herring and salmon. If a buoy appears to be groaning, it's Stellers.

When

Mostly fall through spring, when non-breeding animals move south to feed

Where

Buoys, breakwaters, jetties and rocky islets — Whidbey, the San Juans, the Strait

Sources: NOAA Fisheries — Steller sea lion

Zalophus californianus · Not listed; MMPA-protected

Only the males come this far north, and they arrive loud. California sea lions are smaller and darker than Stellers, with an unmistakable bark, and they concentrate wherever fish concentrate — which is why you find them stacked on marina floats and parked below the Ballard Locks. Their presence in a river mouth is usually a smolt or a returning-run story.

When

Late summer through spring — males head north after the southern breeding season

Where

Marinas, docks, jetties and the mouths of rivers; Everett and Ballard reliably

Sources: NOAA Fisheries — California sea lion

Mirounga angustirostris · Not listed; MMPA-protected; recovered from near-extinction

Hunted to a few dozen animals in the 1890s and now numbering in the hundreds of thousands, which makes every one you see a conservation artifact. They breed and molt on California beaches but individuals wander north, and a molting elephant seal will lie on one Washington beach for weeks looking alarming and shedding sheets of skin. That is normal. Give it a very wide berth, keep dogs away, and report it rather than moving it.

When

Unpredictable; molting animals turn up on local beaches in spring and summer

Where

Open sand and gravel beaches — Whidbey, Camano and the San Juans get occasional visitors

Sources: NOAA Fisheries — northern elephant seal

Enhydra lutris kenyoni · Washington state endangered; not federally listed in WA

The honest answer to the most common question on any beach walk: the animal you are watching in Puget Sound is not a sea otter. Washington's sea otters were wiped out by the fur trade and reintroduced from Alaska in 1969 and 1970 on the outer coast, where the population has grown steadily and stayed. They rarely enter the inland waters. When they do it makes a paper. Worth knowing so a Camano sighting gets identified correctly — and worth a trip to La Push to see the real thing.

When

Year-round — but not here

Where

Washington's outer coast, roughly Destruction Island to Cape Flattery. Not the Salish Sea

Sources: NOAA Fisheries — sea otter · WDFW — sea otter status

Lontra canadensis · Not listed; common

Despite the name, river otters here live a thoroughly marine life: they hunt crab and sculpin in the intertidal, den in beach logs and blackberry, and travel the shoreline in family groups. This is the otter you are seeing on Camano, ninety-nine times out of a hundred. They swim low with the back arched, run on land, and leave conspicuous latrines on docks that smell exactly as advertised.

When

Year-round, and very often at dawn on a falling tide

Where

Every marina, dock, bulkhead and beach in the Sound — including under your boat

Sources: WDFW — living with river otters

Alces alces · Not listed; small northeast-Washington population

Not a marine mammal, and included on purpose. Moose are the only deer that feed underwater: they submerge completely to reach aquatic plants, close their nostrils, and forage on the bottom for well over half a minute at a time — behavior documented repeatedly at Isle Royale and elsewhere. They swim strongly for miles between islands. Washington's moose live in the northeast corner of the state, so you will not glass one from Fort Ebey. But when somebody on the beach insists there's a swimming animal with antlers, the honest answer is: not here, but yes, that's a real thing they do.

When

Whenever there's water and something growing on the bottom of it

Where

Northeast Washington — the Selkirks and Okanogan highlands, not saltwater

Sources: WDFW — moose in Washington · NPS — Isle Royale moose