Offshore Killer Whale The existence of these whales, who live in the open sea of the North Pacific and travel as far south as southern California and as far north as Kodiak, Alaska, was first noted by whale-watch tourists in 1988 and confirmed in 1990, but the difficulty in studying them (the waters they occupy are among some of the most notoriously rough if not outright lethal) leaves scientists with little information. They are physically smaller than both residents and transients, and their saddle patches are very faint, making them tricky to ID.
