Dana Wharf Blog

People call us all the time with the same question: “What will we see if we come out this weekend?” The honest answer is that we never know exactly what’s going to show up. The ocean doesn’t take reservations. But after 55 years of running boats out of Dana Point Harbor, we know the patterns….

On a whale watching trip out of Dana Wharf in March 2026, our naturalist Laura Lopez reported something unusual alongside the day’s fin whales and common dolphins: a sea turtle. It doesn’t happen every trip. Sea turtles are not an everyday sighting in Dana Point waters. But when one shows up, whether it’s an olive…

Three. An octopus has three hearts. If that sounds excessive, wait until you hear the rest. Octopuses also have nine brains, blue blood, zero bones, and arms that can taste food. They can change color in a fraction of a second, squeeze through any gap their beak fits through, and solve puzzles that stump some…

Every once in a while on a Dana Wharf trip, we’ll pass through a stretch of water dotted with jellyfish. Moon jellies drifting near the surface, their translucent bells pulsing slowly in the current. Pacific sea nettles trailing long amber tentacles behind them. Purple-striped jellyfish glowing like something from another planet. They’re beautiful. They’re alien….

If you’ve ever held a shark jaw at a tackle shop or seen one mounted on a wall, you’d swear it was bone. It feels like bone. It looks like bone. But it’s not. Sharks don’t have a single bone in their body. Not one. Instead, their entire skeleton is made of cartilage, the same…

If you’ve been on a Dana Wharf whale watching trip, you’ve seen dolphins. Thousands of them. Megapods of common dolphins stretching across a mile of ocean. Bottlenose dolphins cruising past the harbor mouth. Pacific white-sided dolphins launching out of the water in the wake of the Dana Pride. But have you ever seen a porpoise?…

If you spend enough time on the water off Dana Point, you’ll eventually see a shark. Maybe it’s a mako launching out of the water near San Clemente Island, or a blue shark cruising past the boat on a pelagic trip. It might even be a great white spotted from the air just offshore. One…

If you’ve been out on a Dana Wharf whale watching trip, you’ve almost certainly seen California sea lions. They’re the loud, barking, scene-stealing animals piled on our harbor jetty, sprawled across navigational buoys, and sometimes popping up right alongside the boat to see what we’re doing. But every once in a while, a guest will…

Introduction People ask us this constantly: “When’s the best time to see whales at Dana Point?” And our honest answer is — there isn’t really a bad time. Dana Point is called the Whale Watching Capital of the World for a reason. We have whale activity here essentially 365 days a year. That said, different…

I’ve had this conversation on the boat more times than I can count. Someone watches a humpback whale disappear beneath the surface and asks, “How long until it comes back up?” And then: “How deep did it just go?” The answers vary wildly depending on the species. Some whales are basically surface feeders. Others are…

Every summer when we’re running our offshore whale watching trips out of Dana Point, somebody on the boat has a moment. A blue whale surfaces close — maybe 50 feet away — and there’s this collective silence. It happens every time. Then someone asks, almost in a whisper, “Are they endangered?” It’s a completely understandable…

Sharks get a bad reputation, and a lot of that comes from the fact that most people’s understanding of what they eat starts and ends with “everything.” But the reality is a lot more interesting — and more specific — than that. Having spent years on the water off the Southern California coast, I’ve seen…