THE WHALE WATCHING GUIDE · EVERY OCEAN, EVERY SEASON
Some things you have to see from the water.
Reviews of whale and dolphin watching trips around the world, ocean by ocean. Humpbacks off Maui, grey whales in the Baja lagoons, blue whales over the Tenerife shelf, sperm whales at Kaikoura and orcas through the San Juans. We read the operators so you board the right boat in the right season.
Worth the airfare
Three encounters you can only have in one place.
You can watch whales from a boat in a hundred places. But grey whales nudging their calves up to your hand, sperm whales sounding off a canyon edge, and humpbacks rising through the blue beneath you happen here and almost nowhere else on earth.
Baja California
The Grey Whales That Come to You
Every winter the grey whales finish a 10,000-mile migration in the warm lagoons of Baja, calve there, and then do something they do nowhere else: mothers nudge their newborns up to the little boats to be touched. You do not chase these whales. You sit, engine off, and a wild thirty-tonne animal chooses to lift its head beside your hand. From Cabo and La Paz it is the encounter people fly across the world for.
- 1 Whale Watching Cabo-Women crew-Sightings Guaranteed & Free Photos
- 2 SMALL GROUP Whale Watch | Cabo San Lucas | Biologist | FREE Pics
- 3 Humpback Whales in Cabo San Lucas
Kaikoura, New Zealand
Sperm Whales at the Canyon Edge
A mile off Kaikoura the seabed falls away into a canyon over a kilometre deep, and the cold current that wells up feeds the only place on earth you can reliably see giant sperm whales year-round. The boat finds them logging at the surface between dives, you hear the blow, and then the great square head arches and the flukes lift clear as it slides back down into the dark. Dusky dolphins and orca pods come with the territory.
- 1 Whale Watching in Kaikoura by Boat
- 2 Kaikōura Whale Watching Scenic Flight (40 Minutes)
- 3 Whale Watching in Kaikoura – Ultimate Experience
French Polynesia
Swimming With Humpbacks in the South Pacific
Between July and November humpbacks cross from Antarctica to breed in the warm, glass-clear water around Moorea and Tahiti, one of the few places on earth where you can legally slip in and watch them. A guide reads the whale, you float at the surface, and a mother and calf drift up through the blue beneath you, unbothered, enormous, close. There is no boat railing between you and the biggest encounter in the ocean.
- 1 Whale Tour – Observe and swim with whales
- 2 Swim with humpback whales
- 3 Humpback whale watching and marine life in Moorea
Start here
If you only book one trip.
More travellers reach for this one than any other on the site. A safe first booking in a place that delivers, whatever the season throws at you.
The classics
The World’s Most Popular Whale Watching Trips
Tenerife, Baja, Maui, Iceland, Kaikoura. The trips travellers reach for first, in the places where the whales turn up most reliably.
Where to go
Pick your ocean.
The Canaries for resident pilot whales. Baja for the grey-whale lagoons. Hawaii for the humpback winter, Iceland for the summer feeding grounds, Kaikoura for sperm whales, Australia for the migration. Each region, with the whales and the season it does best.
How close do you want to get
Choose how you meet them.
The kind of boat shapes the whole encounter. Three ways to get out there, depending on how close you want to be and how much sea you can take.
Hawaii in winter
Maui is one big humpback nursery.
From December to April thousands of humpbacks leave Alaska for the warm, shallow water between Maui, Lanai and Molokai to breed and raise their calves. The Auau Channel turns into the busiest whale corridor in the Pacific: breaches off the bow, males duelling in competition pods, and a newborn tucked in tight against its mother. Drop a hydrophone over the side and you hear the males singing through the hull.
See the best whale watching in Maui →Iceland in summer
The midnight-sun feeding grounds.
From May to September the cold, plankton-rich water off Iceland fills with feeding whales. Out of Reykjavik’s Faxafloi Bay you find minkes, white-beaked dolphins and harbour porpoises; head north to Husavik on Skjalfandi Bay, the whale-watching capital of Europe, for humpbacks lunge-feeding and the occasional blue whale. Sailings run late into the bright Arctic evenings.
See the best whale watching in Iceland →Why people come back
You hear it before you see it.
The deck goes quiet, the skipper cuts the engine, and somewhere off the bow there is a low, wet boom as a blow goes up. Then forty tonnes of animal leaves the water entirely and lands in a wall of white spray, and the whole boat shouts at once. You came for that one second. It is worth every cold, early, seasick mile to get it.
Browse every whale watching trip →The Indian Ocean
Sri Lanka is the easiest place to see a blue whale.
The largest animal that has ever lived feeds close to shore off southern Sri Lanka, where the continental shelf drops away just a few miles out. From Mirissa in the south (best December to April) and Trincomalee in the northeast (best May to August), a morning run reaches deep water where blue whales and sperm whales surface between dives, often with spinner dolphins riding the bow the whole way out.
- 1 Whale Watching Mirissa with ( WWC )
- 2 Whale Watching Mirissa with Eagle Eye
- 3 Sports Boat- Private Whale Watching Trip( free breakfast & paid pick-up)
By time on the water
How long do you want to be out?
Some trips are a quick two-hour run to the feeding grounds and back. Some are a half-day out to where the big whales are. And some are full days at the canyon edge chasing the rare ones. Pick the length, we will point you at the boat.
A couple of hours
A quick run to the bay.A short cruise to the feeding grounds just offshore: minkes and dolphins, maybe a humpback, the skyline behind you and the kettle on. Back at the dock before lunch.
Half a day
Out to where the giants are.A half-day on a faster boat that reaches the deeper water: breaching humpbacks, a naturalist reading the blows, and the time to wait out a fluke-up dive and watch them come back.
A full day offshore
A full day at the canyon edge.The big-water trips that run to the shelf break and the deep canyons: sperm whales, orca pods, blue whales in season. The long days on deck you plan a whole trip around.
The migration
Australia’s east coast is the humpback highway.
Every year tens of thousands of humpbacks travel the length of the Australian coast between Antarctica and the warm Queensland breeding grounds, and the whole east coast lines up to watch. Sydney and Byron Bay catch them passing close inshore from May; Hervey Bay, in the calm lee of Fraser Island, is where mothers and calves stop to rest and play through the spring. Breaches, tail-slaps and curious calves all season.
See all 37 whale watching trips in Australia →By place
Pick a port and head out.
Tenerife for resident pilot whales year-round. Cabo for grey whales and humpbacks. Maui for the winter nursery. Reykjavik for the summer feeding grounds. Juneau for bubble-net humpbacks. Kaikoura for sperm whales off the canyon.
By region
Every country with whales worth crossing the world for.
From the Canaries to Baja, Alaska to New Zealand, Iceland to the South Pacific. Browse by the country whose waters you want to be on.
First light to the run home
How a trip on the water unfolds.
First time heading out and not sure what to expect? Here is how a good day goes, from the calm early launch to the dolphins chasing the wake on the way back in.
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