Washington’s Pacific white-sided dolphin records read like a map of the coast itself: Grays Harbor and Pacific counties on the open ocean side, others from Thurston and Kitsap deep inside the Salish Sea, and one from the San Juan Islands National Monument. Twenty-four records over two decades mark a species that passes Washington regularly but keeps mostly to offshore water.
A schooling dolphin of the cold North Pacific
This is one of the most abundant dolphins of the temperate North Pacific, an animal of the continental shelf and slope that travels in schools of dozens to hundreds. It feeds on schooling fish and squid, often alongside whales and seabirds where prey is driven to the surface, and it is famously drawn to boats, riding bow and stern wakes in bursts of speed.
Most often a summer sighting
Washington reports cluster from May through September, cresting in July. The species ranges the North Pacific in every season, but the calmest water and longest days along this coast come in summer, the same months when whale-watchers and boaters are out in numbers to meet schools that have worked inshore.
Status in Washington
NatureServe ranks the Pacific white-sided dolphin S4, Apparently Secure, in Washington, and the species is treated as native to its range here. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state, and the IUCN has not evaluated it globally.
Full species profile
