Gone Whale Watching San Diego

09/22/2025

Check out this mini episode highlighting the most exciting parts of our encounter with eastern tropical pacific killer whales on Saturday!

On September 20th, Gone Whale Watching documented one of the most exciting wildlife encounters off San Diego: Eastern Tropical Pacific Killer Whales hunting ...

09/17/2025

Check out this mini documentary from the Gone Whale Watching team recapping our first encounter with the S***m Whales last week!

We found S***M WHALES in San Diego with Gone Whale Watching! An ultra-rare encounter capped by a magical sunset and a true green flash over the Pacific. This...

08/22/2024

Captain Erica’s amazing dolphin video was featured on ABC World News Tonight with David Muir this evening!

Last week, a group of dolphins was spotted leaping out of the water near San Diego. A video of their impressive display has quickly gained millions of views on social media.

07/10/2024

It was a record-setting Blue Whale day for yesterday! We’ve encountered some pretty large groups of Blue Whales since our company began in 2019, but nothing has ever quite compared to what we witnessed on yesterday’s extended tour! We estimate that we encountered at least 100 Blue Whales in one 4 to 5 mile box! No, that’s not a typo, we legitimately mean one HUNDRED Blue Whales or more! To our knowledge this is one of the biggest groups of Blue Whales documented anywhere around San Diego!

Based on where we found the whales(about 50 miles from Mission Bay), we think it’s very likely that this summer’s Blue Whale season is going to have some serious staying power for San Diego waters!

Our daily 2.5 hour trips are continuing to have a ton of success as well. Captain Tai encountered multiple Blue Whales on each of his Signature Dolphin and Whale Watching tours(2.5 hours) that he helmed yesterday in addition to the monster numbers seen by the extended tour! We’ve officially got the summer time BLUES here in San Diego!

Photos courtesy of Captain Erica

www.gonewhalewatching.com

02/02/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLYZ4AokL3U

For the second time in less than a month, these Eastern Tropical Pacific Killer Whales successfully hunted a coastal bottlenose dolphin less than 100 yards f...

01/14/2024

Gray Whale season is positively humming right now! Yesterday we saw over a dozen Gray Whales, including multiple brand new babies! We expect to see these gray whales on every trip for the new few weeks, so it’s a wonderful time to come whale watching with us!

One of the other perks of Gray Whale season is that it’s the one time of year in San Diego where whales are consistently found closer to shore! It was such a beautiful day yesterday, that this massive female Gray Whale decided to stick her head out of the water and “spyhop” to observe her surroundings! It makes for some beautiful backdrops for photos…just like this one from First Mate yesterday!

Beautiful weather forecasted this coming week, so we’ll see you all on the water!

01/01/2024

Long form video of all the ETPs in San Diego!

Eastern Tropical Pacific Killer Whales or Orcas, are a special type of dolphin that infrequently visits Southern California. These orcas generally range from...

12/19/2023

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!

www.gonewhalewatching.com

10/23/2022

San Diego, we have LIFTOFF! Absolutely amazing whale watching lately on both our 2.5 hour and 8 hour trips! We’ve seen almost every Humpback Whale behavior imaginable, but there’s nothing that’s quite as adrenaline-pumping as a breach! On Friday’s 8 hour trip, our first sighting was a feeding group of 4 Humpbacks including a cow/calf pair! After mom and calf performed a spectacular double-breach, the calf continued to go airborne for the next few minutes! The added time on a full day trip allows us to spend more time with the wildlife, increasing the chances to encounter more active whales!

Amazing photo from First Mate .sackrison

09/06/2022

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!

07/26/2022

Baja Extended Tours are here! With beautiful weather forecasted below the border on Friday, we just added a Baja Extended Trip and there’s 5 spots remaining!

Last weekend we converted both of our extended “Blue Whale” tours into our Baja Extended Tours and were amazed to see so much life! Across our 3 Baja trips last weekend, not only did we see over 20 Blue Whales, but we also saw the rare Cuvier’s Beaked Whales, and even two different kinds of Albatrosses! (Black-footed and Laysan) The best thing about these tours in the late summer and fall is that you just never know what we might see down in Mexico! It’s certainly the best chance to see Killer Whales on a Southern California based tour! There’s almost always a few sightings between now through the fall!

If you’re hoping to catch a Blue Whale on one of our Baja Trips, we strongly recommend booking for this coming Friday! They seem to really be enjoying the feeding opportunities down south, so come take an ocean adventure with us!