Did you know that San Diego is arguably the best place in the world to see Blue Whales?! It’s not an exaggeration, few accessible places on earth have had the consistent volume of whales and the reliability of sightings as San Diego during the early to mid-summer this decade. When I first began navigating San Diego’s coastal waters, I quickly realized just how much ocean wasn’t being explored by the local whale watching community. It soon became apparent that these whales were visiting in much greater numbers than most people realized…as long as you had boats willing to go the distance! With that in mind I really wanted to create a whale watching experience that focused on connecting as many people from the general public with these animals as possible. There’s nothing that compares to experiencing this sort of wildlife in person, and the more people that feel that connection to nature, the better chance we have at changing attitudes about conservation for the future! So that’s why here at @gonewhalewatching we’re willing to cover more ground on traditional length 2.5 hour whale watching trips than any other company in the area. Last summer it wasn’t unusual to travel more than 25 miles one way on the 2.5 hour trips if that’s what it took to find the whales. For the more adventurous whale watchers, our extended tours had no cap on time or distance, resulting in some of the best Blue Whale encounters in the world! Our Blue Whale season in San Diego does fluctuate a bit from year to year. A traditional season is mid to late May through July. Some years like last summer the season can be off to the races as early as May 1st and run through early August. Other years like 2022 the season could last until early September! The main sweet spot since 2018 has been a peak in early to mid-June, and then a gradual decrease through the end of July. The later part of the summer then tends to be a little more up and down. With all of that said, our prime dates for extended Blue Whale Tours continue to sell out quickly, so if you want one of those long range trips this summer I can not stress enough how much you need to get your trip booked now!

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A song for the Blue Whale, by @hanszimmer 🐋 If you’ve been following me for a while now, it’s likely not a secret that I have a major love and passion for film scores. One of my favorite parts about filming wildlife is finding a beautiful piece of music to set the footage too. Most of the time that is for a simple social media clip or the occasional long-form YouTube video. Never did I imagine that one day my favorite composer of them all would compose original music for something I filmed. A few years ago I was pitched a project to film Blue Whales for a new landmark nature series that would air on broadcast television here in the United States. The early stages of these projects are often kept tightly under wraps, but it was one I was happy to sign on for since I would get to stay local to my home in San Diego. They had yet to announce a narrator by the time we started filming, but the team did let me in on one little secret before hitting the water for the first time: @hanszimmer would be composing the score. The footage captured from that summer was once-in-a-lifetime. When working on a project like this you can spend weeks filming these animals without knowing which shots(if any) will make the final cut…that is until that one fateful day when you happen to capture something so unique and spectacular that you just KNOW. I remember being on the boat that day as we drove home, thinking to myself how what we just filmed would one day have original music from Hans Zimmer composed for it. It was as surreal as it was exciting. While our episode hasn’t been released yet(it’s coming April 6th), they did just release the soundtrack to the entire series. That’s when I saw one the one title I’ve been waiting for the most: The Blue Whale. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me a little bit emotional listening to it for the first time…and I can’t wait to see how the full sequence turns out! Catch new episodes of “The Americas” narrated by @tomhanks every Sunday evening on @nbc Our episode “The West Coast” is April 6th!

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CANNONBALL! Less than stellar weather has kept me off the water more than I’d like recently, so I’ve used that time to dig through some old footage and found quite a few good ones I’ve never shared on instagram…including this breach shot from back in 2022! Erica and I have also been working on some new projects for YouTube so keep an eye out for that! #GoneWhaleWatching

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Two worlds collide as a Blue Whale mother and her calf spend an afternoon with some playful Bottlenose Dolphins in San Diego. (Summer 2023) In a world where the future of all wildlife seems less certain by the day, we must find a way to make people embrace the parts of nature that remain. For me personally, no moment changed my outlook on life quite like the first time I witnessed a Blue Whale in person. For that reason I made Blue Whales our number 1 priority species for @gonewhalewatching in San Diego. Every summer these whales are somewhere off of our coast, and I didn’t want to limit our guests’ chances of seeing them by only relying on what could be found in the first 20 miles or so from shore. Blue Whales go wherever the most food is, and sometimes that can be less than a mile offshore, but other years that can be 50 or more miles from harbor. For that reason we invented our “Extended Blue Whale Tours” which have no time or distance constraints. These special extended trips have had remarkable and consistent success since 2020, boasting a 98% success rate in spotting Blue Whales. Nowhere else in California has had this level of consistent Blue Whale sightings. Through tireless effort and exploration, we have tapped into Blue Whale hotspots that other whale watching tours would never consider, including some locations where we’ve seen aggregations of more than 100 whales! The typical season runs mid to late May through July(sometimes longer), with variable timing peaks year to year. Spots are incredibly limited, and all of our first batch of weekend extended trip dates in June are sold out! June does tend to be the most reliable month for whales closer to the harbor, but every year is different. 2024 saw remarkable numbers close to San Diego every day May 7th through mid June, 2023 saw all of June act as a “peak”, and 2022 had two prominent peaks in June and August(!). If you’re thinking about booking one of our Extended Blue Whales tours for 2025, our best advice would be to please not wait! We added a few more dates in June and July, so don’t delay to ensure your spots to connect with the largest animal to ever live!

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If there’s one thing in the world that never gets old, it’s a Humpback Whale jumping out of the water! When guests book our @gonewhalewatching 5-day whale watching experience in Maui, it’s always with the hope of experiencing something magical like this. All that extended time on the water greatly increases the odds at seeing those bucket list behaviors, and our second week of guests got extra spoiled yesterday morning! As we were about to head in for the afternoon, two fully-grown humpback whales rocketed out of the water less than a quarter mile away. As we made our approach, the “breaching spree” continued with multiple breaches right next to our boat! There really are few whale watching experiences in the world that compare to this! A huge thank you goes out to our partner company @maui_ocean_adventures for being such incredible hosts these past two weeks. While our @gonewhalewatching 5-day experiences are sadly coming to an end for 2025, Maui Ocean Adventures will be running daily whale watches into April! You couldn’t choose a better company if you find yourself in Maui over the next few weeks! Cell phone video by @emmajean__17 Slow motion shot by @dolphindronedom With @gonewhalewatching aboard @maui_ocean_adventures

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Sound on to hear the excitement of a boat full of happy whale watchers! 😅 We are so excited to be back in Hawaii for our special 5-day @gonewhalewatching in Maui experience! Our first week of tours were filled with amazing weather and even more amazing whales! It’s our fourth year of sponsoring this special 5-day whale watching experience, and this year was extra special as it was our first time partnering with @maui_ocean_adventures, run by two of the most amazing captains there is in @emmajean__17 and @captain__chrissy. These two ladies are true local Maui heroes that played a major role in helping rescue people in need during the tragic fires in Lahaina two years ago(You can learn more about their story on Chrissy’s page). The opportunity to help support these two women grow their new businesses along with supporting the local Maui community is something we are extremely proud of! Now it’s time for a few days off to prepare for our second set of trips next week. We’ll be announcing dates for 2026 soon, so if you want to join us on these special tours please stay tuned here! Audio/vocals courtesy of @erica.sackrison and @emmajean__17

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@erica.sackrison is currently impatiently waiting for me to come downstairs so we can head out on another ocean adventure, but before I do I just have to say this: Thank you for being the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Gone Whale Watching never could have reached these heights without you. The world has gotten so much joy from the way you’ve shared your passion and talent with so many people. You are the perfect reminder of what working with wildlife should be always about: You are always welcoming and kind to everyone without ego. You didn’t grow up in this field and the concept of gate-keeping is one that doesn’t exist to you. You’ve reminded me to embrace the joy of experiencing these animals…that there’s so much more to life than getting “the shot”. You are the best life partner I could have ever dreamed of, and I’ll never be able to thank you enough. Happy birthday Erica! I’ll come downstairs and pack the car now 🙃 Oh and this is just a short scene from my new 50 minute YouTube film the chronicles a year of our ocean adventures. Don’t forget to check it out!

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Today was far and away the most heartbreaking day I’ve ever had on the water. Erica and I were enjoying some beautiful weather and sea conditions, when I saw the unmistakable “wiggle” of a newborn baby gray whale on the surface. As I prepared the drone, a nagging feeling of foreboding began to linger in the back of my mind. It had only been a minute, but it was a little unusual that I hadn’t seen a mom come to the surface yet. “With how flimsy its tail is, maybe it was literally just born,” I said to Erica. Deep down I think I already knew the heartbreaking truth. As the drone made it to the calf, my worst suspicion was confirmed: there was no mom. For one reason or another this completely dependent calf was on its own. We can only guess as to why. Maybe mom died in childbirth? Worse, maybe mom was hit by a ship, or became fatally entangled in fishing gear. As many of you know, the 2020s were incredibly hard on Gray Whales. The population declined by 50% in less than a decade, primarily due to malnutrition. Lack of food in their summer feeding grounds has been well-documented: a consequence of a warming ocean. While it’s believed the Gray Whale population has stabilized in the last year or so, it’s hard to not feel completely disheartened by a sighting like this. The young whale approached our boat multiple times, likely in a desperate attempt to nurse from our hull. We of course kept our boat completely still at a distance, but it’s clear this little whale was looking for any source of sustenance it could find. Erica and I fought back tears as I made phone calls to every expert and authority I could think of, wishing there was a way to help this whale. The only facility equipped to even try to help a young Gray Whale would be Seaworld, but by law no whale can be taken from its natural environment unless it were to live-strand on a beach. Knowing this whale is facing imminent starvation with no way to feed itself makes me wish some laws had exceptions. I wish there was more I could think of to say, but for now I’m going to leave it at that.

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It’s almost time for baby Gray Whales! This segment is from my new YouTube film, which chronicles the very best of what a year of whale watching in San Diego can be. Mid January tends to be the best time to spot the tiny newborn Gray Whales in San Diego during their southern migration. While this is the second year in a row of the overall migration being a few weeks behind schedule, the pregnant females do usually try their best to be the first whales to make it to their breeding lagoons. That means we should be due for our first sighting of a newborn Gray Whale in the next few days! Despite the slow start to the season, we are still seeing whales on most trips recently. We’ve had some nice variety as well with Gray, Humpback, and Fin Whales all seen within the last week! Absolutely gorgeous weather is forecasted Thursday through the weekend, so we hope you’ll come jump on a trip with us soon! Don’t miss ‘The Whales of San Diego” documentary on YouTube as well!

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