Killer Whale Sightings Making Big Splash on Oregon Coast - Apex Predators Return

Published 04/28/25 at 6:35 p.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Florence, Oregon) – To quote the old scary flick: “They'rrrrre baaack.” (Photo Jaklyn Larsen Photography)

A couple of years ago they made a dramatic display that was historic but grim. Now, a good deal of killer whale sightings around the Oregon coast are making quite the splash once more, with three major sightings since April 21. The first was just inside the Siuslaw River at Florence, the next was a few days later in Tillamook Bay, and then they returned to Florence again on Sunday.

It's a group that caused quite a stir here before: this pod attacked a gray whale mother and her calf back in 2023, a grisly but fascinating event documented by dozens in the Depoe Bay area. Dozens Watch and Document Orcas Attack, Kill Baby Whale on Oregon Coast: More Videos.

What all this means for anyone heading to the coast in the next month or so is that it is prime whale watching season for both grays and orcas. In fact, online reports of orcas far outnumber the sightings of other whales in the usual Facebook groups (although that could just be orca reports are more coordinated).

Jaklyn Larsen Photography

Jacklyn Larsen photographed the single orca wandering the waters of Florence last week. She said she immediately felt something familiar about this one, and a little while later – after posting to the FB group Oregon Coast Killer Whale Monitoring Program – it was ID'd as a lone male transient orca that has hung out here fairly regularly over the years.

Larsen guessed right.

“This is my third time sighting him here in our river, and every time is such a treat,” she wrote on social.

The male is known to researchers, especially Canadian Josh McInnes, who runs the FB group and is with the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries Marine Mammal Research Unit and with the University of British Columbia. He and colleagues have cataloged a good deal of the transient orcas off Oregon, Washington and California as well as B.C.

Orca attack in 2023: Jaklyn Larsen Photography

According to the group's Julie Conrad, this particular male – known as TO51 – got a little famous a few years back for spending considerable time trapped in a lake in Alaska.

The second sighting in Tillamook Bay had a few dramatic videos taken, and this time it was numerous orcas from the same transient group T051 belongs to, said Conrad and McInnes. This pod or grouping was part of the big attack in 2023. Experts have nicknamed them the "Coos Bay Killers" because they've often been seen having a seal buffet in that area.

See video of the Tillamook Bay sighting.

The same bunch popped up again on Sunday but this time in Florence once more.

Photo courtesy NOAA

“They were not in it for too long, but I was grateful to capture a few images of them as they left the river and headed back into the ocean,” Larsen said.

McInnes said there was a decent chance they'd hit Newport's Yaquina Bay soon.

So, what are they up to around here?

They are apex predators, said McInnes in a special video on the orca group page. That means they're out here eating anything and everything that's meat – especially seals and sea lions. This group of transients (the T050's) pop up here a lot in spring, often following or hanging out with T051.

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

Residents (often from the north Washington coast) eat salmon. Transients chomp on mammals, and they sport a gray saddle patch along with pointed fins. The offshore assemblage is still a bit of a mystery to researchers.

There are two kinds of transients: the coastal transients and those outer coast cetaceans. The ones we get to see on the Oregon and Washington coast in the spring are largely the coastal transients – or coastal assemblage – which eat mammals.

There's about 350 whales of the inner coast assemblages that live from California through Alaska, but the outer coast group, which spends its time at least 200 kilometers offshore, is a fairly unknown number. The entire combined population is called the West Coast assemblage.

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