Gone Whale Watching San Diego

Hello Facebook! I know we don’t post on this platform much anymore, but we saw Orcas in our local waters yesterday for the third time this year! Erica got this amazing video of a predation event on a common dolphin that we wanted to share with you! As a reminder, for the most up to date information about our daily tours be sure to follow us on instagram where we are much more active than here!

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Once in a lifetime Blue Whale encounter on our Baja Extended Trip this past weekend! This mom and calf Blue Whale interacted with our stationary boat for more than 30 minutes! It’s incredibly rare for Blue Whales to behave like this, but we are sure happy they took such a liking to us!

It’s amazing to still be having so many Blue Whale sightings in early September (we've been seeing Blue Whales on almost all of our 2.5 hour trips as well as the extended tours), as the season has usually ended by late July each of the past few years. We don't know how much longer the Blues will be here this consistently, but now through November is the nicest weather we experience on the water in San Diego! With the Blues still around and Humpbacks on the way it’s an amazing time to come out whale watching with us!

Drone and boat video by Capt. Dom
GoPro by First Mate Erica, and two of our guests Jaymini and Bill!

June was positively spectacular for whale watching here in San Diego with Gone Whale Watching! We ran 80 Signature Dolphin and Whale Watching tours (2.5 hours), and had nearly 300 Blue Whale sightings!

The overall success rate on seeing Blue Whales was 82% during those local tours, which is by far and away the best Blue Whale sightings success rate of any whale watching tour in California this June! While June tends to be the best month for Blues in our waters every year, we were very fortunate to have so much success throughout the entire month! Blue Whale sightings fluctuate year to year, especially on the 2.5 hour tours, and while San Diego and northern Baja were the epicenter for Blue Whales this June, it could very well be a different part of Southern California next year. With that said, we’ve been lucky here in San Diego that the Blues do seem to visit us every single year in some
capacity during June and July!

July is already off to a great start as well, and we are continuing to see huge numbers of blue whales offshore! Wednesday’s extended trip saw over 30 whales! We still have limited space on the extended tours this July, so don’t delay in snagging one of those final spots soon!

*As always with an encounter like this, it was the whale that approached our stationary boat! In this remarkable encounter it circled us 3 times in a row while we all sat in amazement!

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We had an absolutely magical encounter today with a NURSING BLUE WHALE!! Footage of Blue Whales legitimately nursing is extraordinarily rare, and this is some of the only footage in existence that actually shows the calf opening its mouth and taking a mouthful of its mother's milk! Even though the lighting wasn't great, you can see after it closes its mouth that a plume of white appears around the calf's head! These were two of four Blue Whales we encountered this morning, with many more spouts in the area around us! We never know how long the Blues will stick around, but we hope you'll jump on one of our trips soon while they're still here!

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WHAT A WEEK!
It's been non-stop action with the largest animals on our planet this week, as every single one of our tours since Monday has seen either Blue Whales or Fin Whales...usually both! The constant winds and choppy seas earlier in the spring are paying dividends for our summer feeding season, as a major upwelling event is happening here in our local waters! It's an amazing time to go whale watching here in San Diego, and we encourage you to book ASAP!

Check out this cool video recap of our week on the water, including a Blue Whale that mugged our boat as we were completely stopped, a Blue and a Fin Whale feeding within 50 yards of each other, a big pod of 5 Fin Whales socializing between feeding, and of course massive Blue Whales in all of their glory lifting their tails!

Video by Capt. Dom

Hello Blue Whales!

It was only a matter of time before Blue Whale season got rolling, and boy did we start the season off with a bang! At least 6 different Blue Whales were circling (which indicates feeding) one of our main hot spots below the border, and that is an amazing sign of things to come! This particular spot is used by Blues almost exclusively for feeding, which makes the discovery even more encouraging! When this zone is firing, we've seen as many as 50 Blue Whales here at once in previous years. It's been about 3 years since the last time this spot lit up with Blue Whale spouts, so we are feeling great about the season ahead of us for the summer! All 3 of our signature dolphin and whale watching trips saw Blue Whales yesterday, and the report from Captain Tai this morning is that we had Fin Whales AND Blue Whales down there at 8am again this morning!

Space is available the rest of the week into the weekend, and now would be a great time to hop on one of our boats to go and search for the largest animal on earth!

Use discount code "memorial" for 15% off at checkout!
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Video by Capt. Dom

We had a Fintastic day on the water today! We’ve had numerous Fin Whales in our local waters for awhile now, but today’s encounter was extra special! THREE different cow/calf pairs were encountered on our trips this morning(very rare to see baby fin whales) including one pair that was being hotly pursued by two other large adult whales! This seemed very similar to the “cow/calf/escort” type of interaction that is often seen with Humpback Whales in their breeding grounds. It’s the second time we’ve seen something like this with Fin Whales here at Gone Whale Watching, but this was the first time we have been able to document it!

We have a ton of space available this weekend, and we’d love to have you join us! Lets go spend some time with these amazing animals!

Video by Capt. Dom

We had a positively SPECTACULAR Extended "Baja" Trip today! In what was a first for our company, we observed a large pod of Risso's Dolphins interacting with, and seemingly playing with three giant Humpback Whales! If you look closely you might notice that the Risso's had a couple of stowaways as well with a couple of Short-beaked Common Dolphins seemingly a part of the pod!

We absolutely LOVE all of our extended style tours, and even though all of these trips through May are labeled "Baja" in order to make sure everyone has passports on board in case we end up in coastal Mexico...today we ended up well beyond the borders of both the United States and Mexico, in international waters 65 miles from shore!

Total sightings for the day included:

5 Humpback Whales
1 Gray Whale
1 Fin Whale
1 Minke Whale
2000 Common Dolphins
75 Risso's Dolphins
20 Bottlenose Dolphins
1 Swordfish

You just never know what you might see on one of our full-day extended tours!

Video by Capt. Dom

False Killer Whales today!!!

All of our tours encountered these rare toothed whales as they made their way up the coastline today! There was around 40-50 Falsies in this spread out pod, and it was amazing watching them cruise at high speed from Point Loma all the way to Solana Beach! We had plenty of amazing close passes, and we’re hopeful that we’ll see these charismatic beauties a few more times this year! We saw them four times in 2021!

We’ve also being plenty of Gray Whales with some Humpback and Fin Whales mixed in as well! You never know what you’ll see on one of our tours!

Video by First Mate Erica Sackrison

Once-In-A-Lifetime!

That is the only way to describe what happened to both of our 11am trips yesterday! Gray Whales are some of the friendliest whales in the world when they are in their breeding lagoons in Mexico, but that friendly demeanor is rarely seen in California waters. That all changed on Friday when one of the three whales we were observing decided to break away from the other two, to come over and hang out with our boats! For over twenty minutes this friendly whale rubbed its head on our boats, looked at us in the eyes, and went "full Baja"! When these whales are in Baja, they are unique in that they actually seek out human contact. Broadly speaking this is the only place in the world where this behavior happens, but over the past few years we've been seeing a few whales displaying this friendly behavior even when they are on the migration outside of the lagoons! It's just crucial to remember that encounters like these are only possible on the whale's terms, and that humans on boats can not try to force these sort of interactions. It's always best to approach whales in California waters at about a 100 yard distance, and then let the whales decide if they want to come closer...and that is exactly what happened today!

Filmed by Captain Tai

You just never know when they might show up!

Today a pod of Orcas visited San Diego! This pod is known as the CA 216s, and they have a very special member in their pod: "Frosty" the white Orca! This young calf stood out amongst the crowd and was extremely playful with our boat! It’s our third Orca sighting since July, but the first that was on one of our local trips in San Diego! The Fall is a great time to explore the outer waters for rare species like Orcas, so we hope you’ll grab a spot on one of our extended trips that we added in the coming weeks! Maybe we'll see them again!
Video by Capt. Dom and Alison Moors
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So Long Blue Whale Summer!

With the official arrival of Fall, we wanted to look back on some of the amazing encounters we had with Blue Whales during the summer! It was an interesting year for Blue Whales in San Diego, as these are some of the most unpredictable of our “main” whales that we focus on here. From June 1st to July 10th, the local 2.5 hour trips had better than an 70% success rate, and the offshore extended trips during that time had a 100% success rate! This is by far the best Blue Whale sightings of any operation in California during 2021! After July 10th however, things shifted. Locally we did still see the occasional Blue, but the consistency of the previous weeks had disappeared. The offshore trips remained lucrative through early August, with only one single trip coming up empty in the Blue Whale department. By Mid-August however, the vast majority of the Blue Whales seemed to have left the Southern California Bight.

Despite a shorter season than usual, there was some major highlights, including some remarkable densities of whales early in the summer on the offshore trips. We had 9 different trips that saw more than 25 Blue Whales, and we had 4 that saw at least 50! On one special extended trip, we saw more whales than what was realistically possible to count, but our best guess was somewhere around 100 Blue Whales! Everywhere you looked there was a pocket of 5-6 whales feeding together approximately 25 miles south of San Clemente Island! The area was spread out over about 50 total miles, and our range to reach these far southwest banks was crucial for these amazing Blue Whale encounters!

Along the coast AND offshore the main highlight of this Blue Whale season was by far the sheer number of newborn calves! Blue Whales generally keep to themselves and rarely show any curiosity towards boats, but that all changed this summer with some of the friendliest mom/calf pairs we’ve ever seen of ANY species!

We know this is a bucket list species for many of you to see, and trying to predict where and when to see a Blue Whale along the California coast is always a challenge. Places like the Santa Barbara Channel can be the epicenter for Blue Whales one year, only to see next to zero whales the following summer. San Diego’s extended waters out to 60 miles or so is a different story. Simply put there has been Blue Whales every year in June and July within range of our boat. For that reason we’ve added special “Blue Whale” trips for 2022 that will exclusively seek out the largest animal on earth during those ultra reliable weeks in June and July. We will still run our regular 2.5 hour whale watching trips as well that focus on both dolphins and whales (remember we saw Blues on better than 70% of our 2.5 hour trips June 1st through early July), but these special extended Blue Whale trips are for those that traveled to San Diego with one thing in mind: To see a Blue Whale! The trip length will be anything from 4-10 hours depending on how far offshore these giants are, as the goal of these trips is to simply find the Blues wherever they may be! For more information on these tours and to book your spot for next summer visit our website at www.gonewhalewatching.com, click “book now” and select “Blue Whale Trips 2022” from our trip menu!

Footage from this past summer by Captain Domenic Biagini with underwater (GoPro) contributions from Kyle Christensen.

Minke Madness is back! While having Twitch the Humpback back in town the last few days has been the main headline, it was this amazing Minke Whale that stole the show on today's extended trip! The sightings have really picked up in the last week, and we expect the Fall to just keep getting better and better!

Now through the end of the year is when we have our best sea conditions and weather, as well as some of our best sightings! Our reservations are fairly light at the moment, so come on out and spend a few hours on the water with us! In the meantime, enjoy the highlights from our incredible interaction with this Minke Whale today!

Top side video by Capt. Dom
GoPro by First Mate Alison

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You’ve heard of Blue Whales, you’ve heard of Gray Whales, you’ve probably even heard legends of White Whales, but have you ever heard of a Yellow Whale!? A weekend of incredible sightings on our 8hr trips was capped by a remarkable encounter with Cuvier’s Beaked Whales: one of the most elusive and mysterious cetaceans on earth! This is some of the only drone footage ever taken of this species, and it was an amazing moment for everyone involved! Initially 12 of these yellowish-brown whales appeared as we were waiting for one of the many Blue Whales that we had been observing to surface 70 miles offshore! After a 30 minute dive, half a dozen Cuvier’s returned to the surface with chunks of squid right next to our boat! The water depth was over 6,000 feet in this location, which is nothing for a Cuvier’s as they are the deepest diving animal on earth, capable of reaching depths nearly TWO MILES below the surface!

In our 4 Extended Trips we ran this weekend we encountered over a dozen different Bryde’s Whales and an uncountable number of Blue Whales, but nothing compares to being some of the few people on the planet to spend time with Cuvier’s Beaked Whales!

While most of the whale action was 70 miles offshore this weekend, there was quite a few Bryde’s Whales working their way towards San Diego, and even a handful of the Blue Whales were headed eastbound towards our local waters as well, so we’re hoping for a big finish to the summer! We did have a Blue Whale on our 2.5 hour trips on Saturday afternoon!

Video by Captain Domenic Biagini

Stay tuned later this week to see video of an absolutely amazing encounter we had with 4 Bryde’s Whales on Saturday!

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It’s only fitting that we found ORCAS on World Orca Day today! It’s been nearly 17 months since we last found the ocean’s apex predator, but today we finally broke out of the drought! Adding to the sentiment, this is the SAME POD (Eastern Tropical Pacific 163s) we found in February of 2020 near Catalina Island! This time they were even further away, cruising 15 miles off the back side of San Clemente Island! Every single time we run one of these Extended Trips, we are always hoping to get lucky and find these beautiful animals, and boy did we hit the jackpot today! Much more to come from a wonderful day on the water!

Filming was done by the Gone Whale Watching film crew led by Captain Domenic Biagini, along with Kyle Henderson, Kyle Christensen, and Alison Moors!

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From Capt. Dom-
The most tragic thing I’ve ever filmed: a pod of dolphins swimming through a giant oil spill. The spill is spanning an area covering more than 50 miles, and it is lurking just off the coast of San Diego. On today’s extended trip we made our way to our reliable Blue Whale hotspot near San Clemente Island and we were shocked when the whales seemingly vanished. Just 24 hours earlier this zone was full of the feeding giants. It was then that we began making our way south, and soon made this shocking discovery. Tragic doesn’t begin to cover it. For more than 50 miles the ocean was covered in a thick sheen of oil, a devastating tragedy for the environment. We know very little at this time, and we are trying to make these images go viral in hopes of getting some answers as to how this happened. More shocking yet, 70+ miles away back in coastal San Diego, the local whale watching boats reported an area (albeit smaller in scale than what we discovered offshore) thick with oil encroaching on the local waters as well. I truly hope this isn’t as bad as it appears, but if the oil is already in an area that spans at a minimum of 70 miles, we could have a catastrophe of unimaginable scale on our hands. Please share this video, we need answers.
We’ve reached out to NOAA, the Coast Guard, and the EPA. We hope to have an update soon.

Blue Whale season is officially here! 7 straight days of Blue Whales locally, as well as huge numbers (20+) of Blue Whales offshore on the extended trips! San Diego is the only place in Southern California seeing these giants right now, and we are the only company that’s had the range to get to them as often as we have! The highlight has been five different sets of cow/calf pairs, many of which have repeatedly mugged our stationary boats! One of the little calves even got the "zoomies" and began splashing around with a pod of Common Dolphins! These have truly been some of the best Blue Whale trips in our company’s history, and the best part is the season is only just beginning!

For the most up to date information make sure you are following us on Instagram!

See you on the water!

www.gonewhalewatching.com