data source· draft

Orcapelago

Web map of orca and other whale sightings in the Salish Sea, placed on the map from the narrative reports in Orca Network newsletters.

Living systems

Orcapelago is a map of whale sightings in the Salish Sea as reported by the Orca Network. It runs on the domain of Bright Rain Solutions, a GIS and web-mapping firm in Fort Collins, Colorado, founded by David Puckett; the site itself does not name its author. The map shows the sightings from the latest Orca Network newsletter by default and can be filtered by date range and species.

Each sighting record keeps the newsletter it came from, the date and time, species, group or pod, individual identifiers, count, direction, behaviours and how it was detected. Acoustic detections are drawn at the hydrophone rather than at the whales. The original location text is stored alongside the derived coordinates, with a field recording the geocoding method and a flag marking records that still need review.

The site is public and needs no account. Its sightings endpoint returns GeoJSON. No licence or terms are stated.

Live; records in the feed are dated October 2026.

coverage
Salish Sea
resolution
one point per reported sighting, with the original location text
cadence
follows Orca Network newsletters
access
public web map; GeoJSON from the site's own API
format
GeoJSON
homepage
https://orcapelago.brightrain.com/

Tags: orca, whales, sightings, salish sea, map

staging: drafts and proposals shown