About SalishSea.io
Communities throughout the Salish Sea are working to monitor and protect the diversity of life it supports. This site serves as a portal into their efforts.
We currently show:
- iNaturalist observations of cetaceans and pinnipeds
- Sightings submitted to the Whale Alert mobile app by the public
- Sightings from the Orca Network community
- Observations of humpbacks within the Salish Sea from HappyWhale (open data, 2012-April,2025)
Data download
The full observation dataset is published nightly as a Darwin Core Archive, with a GeoParquet sidecar for spatial tools. Native SalishSea.io observations and Maplify / Whale Alert sightings (including Orca Network and Cascadia) are included; iNaturalist and Happywhale are excluded — those are already published to GBIF by their canonical sources. Licensed CC BY-NC 4.0.
Updated nightly at 09:00 UTC.
If you have any feedback, use the Feedback button on the map, or email rainhead@gmail.com. This free, open access, site is based on open source code pioneered by Peter Abrahamsen and is funded in 2025-26 by Beam Reach.