Whale Watching

Every summer, somewhere between the second dolphin stampede and the third round of “did you SEE that,” a guest leans over the rail and asks me the same question: “Can we get in the water with them?” It is a fair thing to wonder. When a pod of common dolphins is riding your bow wave,…

People ask us this one on the boat all the time. They are planning a California trip, they know they want to see whales, and they have narrowed it down to two spots on the map: Santa Barbara up north, and Dana Point down here in south Orange County. Both are real whale country. Both…

Ask anyone who works the docks here and they will tell you the same thing: October is one of the best-kept secrets in Dana Point. The summer crowds have thinned out, the kids are back in school, and the ocean does this thing in fall where it goes flat and glassy for days at a…

Spend enough mornings on the water off Dana Point and you start to get a feel for how a whale moves. Most of the time it is unhurried. A fin whale will surface, blow a tall column of mist, roll that long gray back through the swell, and slip under again, all at a pace…

Ask most people when to go whale watching in Dana Point and they will say winter for the gray whales or July for the blue whales. Almost nobody says September. That is exactly why we love it. By the time the calendar flips past Labor Day, the summer crowds thin out, the morning marine layer…

Ask anyone who works the docks down here and they will tell you the same thing: if you only get to go whale watching once all year, make it August. By the time August rolls around, the water off Dana Point has warmed up, the krill has stacked up, and the biggest animals on the…

One of the questions guests ask most often once a blue whale is alongside the boat is some version of: where does this thing go when summer ends? The whale we’re looking at off Dana Point right now does not stay here. Blue whales move. The ones that show up in the Southern California Bight…

The most underdressed group of whale watching guests we see all year shows up between June and September. People look at the inland forecast, see 87 degrees, dress for a pool day, and walk down the dock in shorts and a tank top. Then the boat clears the breakwater, the westerly comes up at 12…

If you have never been whale watching before and you are planning your first trip out of Dana Point, this is the walkthrough we wish we could hand every guest before they show up. It covers the harbor walk-in, the boat itself, what happens during the trip, how to read the captain’s cues, and what…

The single most asked question we get on every whale watching trip out of Dana Point is some version of this: “I have a phone (or a camera). How do I actually get a good shot of the whale?” Our captains have been watching guests try, succeed, and miss for decades. Here is everything we…