Where there are Chinook salmon, the orcas will likely follow. Despite what can feel like a desperate and futile effort to save the region’s venerated southern resident killer whale population, the fix is relatively simple: to help save them, the supply of their primary prey must grow.
Far easier said than done. But even as they teeter close to extinction, there are some positive signs — namely, that Washington’s congressional, state and tribal leaders continue to focus on their protection. They’ve wisely prioritized wild salmon habitat restoration, laws that require mariners to keep their distance from whales and efforts to keep pollutants out of Puget Sound. That work must continue.
This year’s census of the southern residents show they grew by one, to 74, in a 2025 count conducted annually by the Center for Whale Research. Between the J, K and L pods, four orcas were born. Two calves and an adult died. K Pod’s population fell to a distressing 14, the lowest point in half a century.
The harsh reality: The southern residents, which frequent Washington’s inland Salish Sea and travel the Pacific Ocean as far south as California, are far too undernourished. They need more sustenance from the salmon they crave.
Through that challenge, there have been bits of good news this year: In mid-September, one of the pods made a rare visit south of the Tacoma Narrows. The whales of J Pod swam into Carr Inlet near Gig Harbor.
J Pod may also have avoided the South Sound due to orcas’ long memories. More than 50 years ago, whales were captured there for marine parks. Last year, the L Pod reclaimed Penn Cove on Whidbey Island in similar fashion, a place where seven orcas were seized and three drowned in the early 1970s.
But there might be another reason at play. Going into the South Sound “tells me they’re finding food,” said Shari Tarantino, executive director of the Orca Conservancy.
Was that food the result of billions of dollars in projects that have restored and expanded wild salmon habitat throughout Puget Sound and the wider Salish Sea? That potential is there but difficult to quantify. So many factors determine the life of a salmon, including the often-changing conditions of the ocean, where they spend the bulk of their lives, along with cumulative environmental degradation that will take decades to reverse.
A 2023 study by the American Fisheries Society, which examined why salmon numbers aren’t yet increasing as more habitat restoration projects are completed, concluded in part that “the scale of the problem is large, so the response needs to be correspondingly large to yield desired outcomes.”
So how can we know it’s working? Think of a salmon’s life as an extensive obstacle course. Sometimes, the barriers along the way are insurmountable, with many fish unable to make the journey to sea and back. Other years, favorable conditions will bring many home to freshwater, spawning a new generation.
If restoration creates more habitat — ultimately more places for juveniles to grow before the trek to the Pacific — the projects improve the probability of greater runs.
One example, near where J Pod ventured: the Nisqually River Estuary and watershed, where the Nisqually Tribe breached a dike in 2009 as part of the largest tidal marsh restoration project in the country. It opened some 900 miles of nearshore habitat; observers viewed juvenile salmon in formerly inaccessible tidal channels as quickly as one year after the work.
Similar projects are underway or planned around the Salish Sea. Those projects should maximize salmon potential, an aspiration not always met. A Seattle Times investigation found some Washington State Department of Transportation fish passage projects have not been effective in helping fish move within watersheds. State leaders need to do a better job in funding projects that deliver the most for the money.
Disappointingly, the Trump administration has axed funding for among the best sources of new habitat: a fish passage project at Howard A. Hanson Dam, which would reopen 60 miles within the Green Duwamish Watershed. Congressional leaders, including Washington’s U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, are calling for the funding to be restored.
The work must go on. But there are two other priorities scientists say will go a long way to help orcas. The first is protecting them from vessel noises that interfere with their ability to hunt. Gov. Jay Inslee and the state Legislature deserve credit for enacting a 1,000-yard vessel buffer mariners must obey around the southern residents.
Lastly, state and local governments can and should do more to keep pollutants, including managing stormwater and sewage runoff, from reaching Puget Sound. The cleaner, less toxic the marine environment, the more the ecosystem, including wild salmon and orca, can thrive.
But bringing back Chinook salmon in numbers great enough to grow the southern resident population is still elusive. Our leaders have the answer to the problem. What remains necessary is the political will to get there.
