First Major Orca Sighting on Oregon Coast - Look for More Soon

Published 04/08/26 at 6:55 p.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Florence, Oregon) – For the last few years, the most-talked about sight during spring is the surge of orcas that come into Oregon coast waters, almost like clockwork. And now they're back, apparently. (Photo from Wednesday in Florence, Jaklyn Larsen Photography)

A rather well-known male orca was seen wandering the jetty area of Florence earlier today (Wednesday), causing a hub-bub online with the various social media whale groups. Jaklyn Larsen was one of the few who got photographs.

She said she spotted the sighting of the whale on one of the whale groups, and made a beeline for the area.

“I grabbed my gear and got down to the jetty within a few minutes,” Larsen told Oregon Coast Beach Connection. “He traveled up to about the Green trees neighborhood on the Siuslaw river before turning around and making his way back out to sea. This is the third time I’ve seen him come into this river in recent years, so in a way it was like seeing a familiar friend.”

Folks running the Oceanic Research Alliance ID'd the whale. Leader Josh McInnes told Oregon Coast Beach Connection it is T049C, born in 1998 and going by the name Nielsen to many.

McInnes said the last encounter his group had with T049C was March 19th in the Juan de Fuca Strait near the Race Rocks Pacific Ecological Reserve.

“We often see the transient (Bigg’s) orcas entering the rivers around springtime as they’re on the hunt for their next meal,” Larsen said. “These orcas are the mammal-eaters, so they often follow the pinnipeds upriver to their haul outs.”

See Dozens Watch and Document Orcas Attack, Kill Baby Whale on Oregon Coast: More Videos.

What all this means for anyone heading to the coast over the next month is simple: it’s peak whale-watching season for both grays and orcas. In fact, online reports of orcas often wind up dominating the usual Facebook groups this time of year.

So what exactly are they doing around here?

Florence orca sighting last year, Jaklyn Larsen Photography

“They are apex predators,” said program leader McInnes. “That means they’re out here eating just about anything that’s meat — especially seals and sea lions. One transient group (the T050’s) shows up frequently in spring, often following or traveling with T051."

Meanwhile, the Washington coast has been dealing with its own run of whale tragedies. More Odd Washington Coast Whale News: Another Seen Inland, Some Necropsy Results - Some results released from the Willapa River whale as another moves inward today

McInnes told Oregon Coast Beach Connection there are three ecotypes of killer whale found along the California and Oregon coasts: “residents,” “transients,” and “offshores.”

Residents - often from the north Washington coast - feed on salmon. Transients hunt mammals and are identified by a gray saddle patch and pointed fins. The offshore group remains something of a mystery to researchers.

There are two types of transients: coastal transients and those farther-out cetaceans. The whales most often spotted off Oregon and Washington in spring are the coastal transients - also called the coastal assemblage - which specialize in marine mammals.

Roughly 350 whales make up the inner-coast assemblages from California to Alaska.

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