Orca activity around Whidbey Island has kicked into high gear over the holidays.

A transient pod sighting started on Christmas Eve in Penn Cove and continued through Christmas Day.

More pod sightings occurred in Admiralty Bay over the weekend and resumed early this week in Saratoga Passage.

Jill and Clarence Hein of Coupeville learned of the sightings in Admiralty Bay Dec. 26 and launched their boat from Keystone to try to find them. They spotted about five or six transient orcas about a mile offshore of Whidbey near Partridge Point. She identified them as being from the T37A pod.

“We were about to give up,” said Jill Hein, a board member with the Langley-based Orca Network. “I looked across the bay and said, ‘There they are.’”

Several Coupeville residents got a Christmas Day surprise when a pod of orcas swam into Penn Cove and stayed awhile last Thursday.

Anywhere from five to seven transient orcas were spotted and word traveled fast through social media as a crowd of people gathered on the wharf and gazed.

Among them was Lynda and Mitch Richards, who operate the Lovejoy Inn on Eighth Street and experienced their first sighting in 17 years.

“To have it come on Christmas made it special,” Lynda Richards said. “My husband in particular has been orca hunting for years. He was most excited.”

The months of October, November and December are the best time to see resident orcas around Whidbey as they feed on salmon returning to area rivers, said Howard Garrett, co-director of the Orca Network.

Transient orcas feed only on marine mammals.

Garrett said the transient orcas identified in Penn Cove around Christmas were from the T46 pod, spotted for months in Puget Sound.