Killer Whales of Alaska
A living guide to the salmon-eating residents, mammal-hunting transients, offshore shark specialists and overlapping killer-whale communities of Alaska.
Search by pod, stock, region, prey type or Alaska killer-whale story.
One state. Several killer-whale cultures.
Alaska is one of the most complex killer-whale regions on Earth. Salmon-eating Residents, mammal-eating Transients and offshore shark specialists can occupy the same broad seas while remaining genetically, acoustically and culturally distinct.
The best-studied southern Alaska Residents live in large maternal families and follow salmon across Prince William Sound, Kenai Fjords, Kodiak and Southeast Alaska. Some pods travel more than 1,800 km, proving that “Resident” describes an ecotype and social tradition—not a whale that stays in one bay.
Alaska’s mammal hunters are even more complex. The tiny AT1 / Chugach population occupies the same waters as much wider-ranging Gulf of Alaska transients but does not socially merge with them. Farther southeast, West Coast Bigg’s overlap Alaska waters, while Northern Residents from British Columbia also enter the region.
Minimum abundance used for the Eastern North Pacific Alaska Resident management stock in recent federal analyses.
Resident pods tracked in the long-term Gulf of Alaska photo-identification program.
Photo-identified whales used as the minimum estimate for the Gulf of Alaska–Aleutian–Bering Sea Transient stock.
AT1 / Chugach Transients remaining in NOAA’s 2026 overview after a collapse from 22 whales in the late 1980s.
One spill. Two killer-whale communities changed for decades.
When the Exxon Valdez grounded in Prince William Sound, both AB Pod and the AT1 Transients moved through heavily oiled waters. The consequences were unlike anything seen in neighboring killer-whale groups.
AB Pod—part of the fish-eating Alaska Resident community—lost a large share of its members in the period following the spill and has never fully regained its former size. The AT1 Transients suffered an even more catastrophic decline. Nine of the original 22 whales disappeared within roughly a year and a half, and the population has produced no known calf since before the spill.
The two groups eat completely different prey and belong to different killer-whale cultures, yet the same environmental disaster left both with demographic scars that are still visible more than three decades later.
Salmon. Marine mammals. Sharks.
Salmon specialists
Large, vocal maternal groups follow salmon runs and maintain pod-specific call traditions. Chum, Chinook and coho are especially important in southern Alaska.
Marine-mammal hunters
Smaller, quieter groups hunt seals, porpoises, sea lions, belugas and sometimes baleen whales. Different transient populations overlap Alaska without becoming one social community.
Shark specialists
Large ocean-ranging groups carry extreme tooth wear associated with feeding on sharks and other fish and can travel between Alaska and California.
AA, AB, AD, AK, AX…
Southern Alaska Resident pods were assigned letter combinations as researchers photographed and sorted social groups. Pod labels such as AB, AD8 and AK6 describe social and acoustic units—not individual whales.
Pods can split
Resident pods are made of matrilines. As the population grows, social units can split while retaining closely related calls. AK2 and AK6 are a classic example, and the growing AK2 complex appears to be subdividing again.
Acoustics reveal hidden whales
Some pods are heard on winter hydrophones far more often than they are seen. Killer-whale call repertoires can identify pods and populations even when weather, darkness or distance prevents visual photo-identification.
Alaska’s population map is still being rewritten
Management “stocks,” biological populations, ecotypes and social pods are not the same thing. Some federal Alaska stocks cover enormous ranges and almost certainly contain more biological structure than their current management boundaries imply.
This WUTA guide therefore uses the long-term pod framework for familiar southern Alaska Residents, while treating broader abundance figures as dated management estimates. Rare pods may have more recent encounters outside the core Prince William Sound / Kenai Fjords research region than their local field notes suggest.
Pods, populations & visitors
Explore the resident pods tracked across the Gulf of Alaska, then move into the mammal-hunting populations and other killer-whale communities that overlap Alaska waters.
01 AA1 & AA30 Pods Resident pods
Field notes
- Rarely encountered in the long-term Gulf of Alaska study area.
- These pods have been thoroughly documented only a handful of times since 2000, making current family composition harder to track than the frequently encountered Prince William Sound pods.
02 AB Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- First catalogued in 1984 and strongly associated with Prince William Sound.
- AB Pod passed through the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 and lost roughly one-quarter of its members soon afterward.
- Unlike most neighboring resident pods, AB has still not returned to its pre-spill abundance, and some matrilines have disappeared completely.
03 AB25 Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- Originally catalogued as part of AB Pod before becoming recognized as a separate social unit.
- AB25 whales are most commonly encountered in Prince William Sound.
04 AD5 Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- Historically encountered in Kenai Fjords and Prince William Sound, with records from Kodiak and Kachemak Bay.
- The pod has not been reliably documented in the core study area since 2016.
- One adult male, nicknamed Lobster, is famous for a long-term collapsed dorsal fin.
05 AD8 Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- One of the most frequently encountered resident pods in Kenai Fjords during early summer.
- Several whales carry distinctive dorsal-fin notches that make the pod especially familiar to local observers.
- AD8 is the only resident pod documented traveling over the moraine into Northwestern Fjord.
06 AD11 Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- Frequently encountered in Kenai Fjords and Prince William Sound.
- Its call repertoire resembles that of AD5, suggesting a close historical relationship between the two pods.
07 AD16 Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- Frequently encountered in Kenai Fjords and Prince William Sound and known to travel deep into Prince William Sound fjords.
- Acoustic and genetic work shows an especially close relationship with AK pods despite the AD designation.
08 AE Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- Strongly associated with Prince William Sound and comparatively uncommon in open-ocean waters.
- An unusually high proportion of AE males have damaged, bent or collapsed dorsal fins.
09 AF5 Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- One of several resident pods that spends much of its time in Southeast Alaska between Icy Strait and Frederick Sound.
- AF5 also makes long movements to Prince William Sound, Kenai Fjords and Kodiak, illustrating why the old term resident can be misleading.
10 AF22 Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- Closely associated with Southeast Alaska but periodically documented hundreds of miles away in the northern Gulf of Alaska.
- AF22 and AF5 share a broader acoustic and social history within the Alaska Resident community.
11 AG Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- Often associated with Southeast Alaska between Icy Strait and Frederick Sound.
- AG whales regularly make long-distance trips toward Prince William Sound, Kenai Fjords and Kodiak.
12 AH1 & AH20 Pods Resident pods
Field notes
- Rarely encountered pods with little recent documentation in the central Gulf of Alaska study area.
- Sparse sightings make current abundance and matriline structure more difficult to assess.
13 AI Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- Most often associated with Montague Strait, Hinchinbrook Entrance and waters around Kayak Island.
- AI is part of the long-running Prince William Sound resident catalogue.
14 AJ Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- One of the most familiar Prince William Sound resident pods.
- Long-term annual photo-identification has allowed researchers to follow its families across generations.
15 AJ8 Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- Historically part of the broader AJ social complex and most commonly encountered in Prince William Sound.
- AJ8 has been seen less frequently than the main AJ Pod in more recent years.
16 AK2 & AK6 Pods Resident pods
Field notes
- The AK whales split into two major pods during the 1990s but retain nearly identical calls.
- AK6 is among the most frequently encountered resident pods in Kenai Fjords and regularly visits Prince William Sound.
- AK6 is also the resident pod most often documented rubbing on beaches near Fox Island in Resurrection Bay.
- The growing AK2 branch appears to be splitting further into newer social units such as AK9, AK10 and AK16.
17 AL Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- A rarely documented resident pod.
- The best-known Gulf of Alaska encounter came from Prince William Sound in 2009, with additional photographs from the Barren Islands.
18 AM Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- A small and rarely encountered pod first clearly documented in Kenai Fjords in 2011.
- Its limited sighting history makes it one of the less-understood Alaska Resident groups.
19 AN10 Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- Not frequently seen from research vessels, but regularly detected on winter hydrophones.
- The pod demonstrates how acoustic monitoring can reveal presence even when visual encounters are scarce.
20 AN20 Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- Another infrequently photographed pod that is heard more regularly on winter acoustic recorders.
- Its call patterns help distinguish it from neighboring resident groups.
21 AP Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- First documented in 2003 but not formally named until repeated observations clarified the social relationships.
- AP whales have been encountered in Kachemak Bay and Kenai Fjords.
22 AS2 Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- A long-known but relatively infrequently encountered resident pod.
- Sightings in the core study region can be separated by several years.
23 AS30 Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- Part of the broader AS resident lineage first catalogued in 1984.
- Like AS2, the group is encountered much less frequently than the familiar Prince William Sound pods.
24 AW Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- Rarely encountered in the central Gulf of Alaska study area.
- Satellite telemetry has shown that AW whales spend time west of Kodiak Island, revealing a range larger than visual sightings alone suggested.
25 AX1 Pod Kodiak-centered resident
Field notes
- Part of the larger AX complex originally mistaken for one enormous pod after a 1990 multi-pod aggregation.
- Later work showed that the AX whales consist of several separate matrilineal groups centered largely around Kodiak.
- AX1 has been only rarely documented in the northern Gulf study area in recent years.
26 AX27 Pod Kodiak-centered resident
Field notes
- One of the AX groups seen often enough for researchers to maintain useful matriline and acoustic records.
- The pod appears centered farther west around Kodiak and occasionally reaches the outer Kenai Peninsula.
27 AX32 Pod Kodiak-centered resident
Field notes
- A rarely encountered AX group with very limited recent documentation in the core northern Gulf research area.
28 AX40 Pod Kodiak-centered resident
Field notes
- Another infrequently encountered branch of the AX complex.
- Its sporadic appearances reinforce how much of Alaska Resident social structure occurs outside the best-sampled Prince William Sound and Kenai Fjords regions.
29 AX48 Pod Kodiak / Katmai resident
Field notes
- A large AX social complex containing several matrilines.
- Telemetry shows use of waters along Kodiak and the Katmai coast, while occasional visits bring some AX48 families into Kenai Fjords.
30 AY Pod Resident pod
Field notes
- Once encountered regularly along the Kenai Fjords coast.
- The pod has not been reliably documented in the core study area since 2016, making its present distribution less certain.
31 AT1 / Chugach Transients Depleted Alaska stock
Field notes
- A genetically and acoustically distinct mammal-eating population centered on Prince William Sound and Kenai Fjords.
- The group numbered 22 whales when long-term study began in the 1980s.
- Nine whales disappeared within about a year and a half of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, and no calf has been documented since before the spill.
- Recent NOAA summaries describe only about six surviving whales, all of the remaining females beyond normal reproductive age.
- AT1 whales have their own call repertoire and unusually high fidelity to the Prince William Sound / Kenai Fjords region.
32 Gulf of Alaska Transients Marine-mammal hunters
Field notes
- A separate mammal-eating population from the AT1 whales, ranging broadly from the Gulf of Alaska through the Aleutian Islands and Bering Sea.
- Photo-identification catalogues contain at least 587 individual whales across this stock, though the number of catalogued animals is not the same thing as a current abundance census.
- Different groups specialize on prey such as harbor seals, porpoises and Steller sea lions; whale hunting is more common in some regions than others.
- Long-term work in the northern Gulf found these transients to be much less site-faithful than AT1 whales.
33 Offshore Killer Whales Shark specialists
Field notes
- Offshore killer whales range from California north through Alaska and can occur in large groups far from shore.
- Their heavily worn teeth and observed predation suggest a strong reliance on sharks and other fish.
- They overlap geographically with Alaska Residents and transient killer whales but remain genetically, acoustically and ecologically distinct.
34 Northern Residents in Southeast Alaska Cross-border residents
Field notes
- Northern Resident killer whales from British Columbia regularly use parts of Southeast Alaska.
- They remain a distinct fish-eating population from the Alaska Residents despite geographic overlap.
- Southeast Alaska is therefore one of the places where multiple resident communities can occur in the same broader region without merging socially.
35 West Coast Bigg’s in Southeast Alaska Cross-border transients
Field notes
- West Coast Transient / Bigg’s killer whales range from California through British Columbia and into Southeast Alaska.
- They overlap with Alaska-specific transient populations but are genetically and socially distinct.
- This overlap makes Southeast Alaska one of the most complex killer-whale regions in the Northeast Pacific.
36 Unimak gray-whale hunters Specialized transient group
Field notes
- A small killer-whale group hunts near Unimak Island during the spring gray-whale migration into the Bering Sea.
- Published genetic work indicates these whales may not belong neatly to other recognized transient populations.
- Their seasonal use of a migration bottleneck is one of Alaska’s clearest examples of local killer-whale hunting specialization.
Where the facts come from
This WUTA guide is independently written from long-term Alaska photo-identification, government stock assessments and peer-reviewed killer-whale research.
- North Gulf Oceanic Society — Alaska Resident pod catalogue and ecology
- North Gulf Oceanic Society — AT1 and Gulf of Alaska Transients
- NOAA Fisheries — Killer Whale Research in Alaska
- NOAA Fisheries — killer-whale ecotypes and current conservation status
- NOAA Fisheries — Alaska Marine Mammal Stock Assessments
- Matkin et al. — AT1 and Gulf of Alaska Transient abundance and residency
- NOAA — historic photographic catalogue from the Gulf of Alaska to the Bering Sea
- Scientific Reports 2025 — North Pacific population acoustics and current Alaska context
Pod membership, current abundance and stock boundaries can change as whales are re-encountered and genetic/acoustic work improves. Use the newest primary catalogues for formal identification or scientific decisions.
