Killer Whale Quest Season Ending Soon: Discussion

Spring has been a battle with the weather! It's such a beautiful time to be amongst the Channel Islands as they come alive with color. But the seasonal dynamics with regards to wind have been responsible for a cancellation rate of over 50% of our trips since February.

A lot of eager customers have been let down, and there's just nothing we can do about it. Except to repeat it as often as we can: this is not a normal whale watching trip; it's a highly specialized expedition that often exceeds 200 miles in one day. We are searching for a few black triangles (orca dorsals) in a vast ocean. The conditions need to be perfect for that to happen. That's why it's on our website to prepare for cancellation the day before your trip, and don't travel from too far away if you can't handle the disappointment!

Now that I've been upfront with the bad stuff, the good part is that this season has exceeded expectations, and we are learning more about orcas and finding them with each passing trip. We've had 6 trips in a row with Killer Whales, starting our streak on March 25th and continuing through April 19th. Our most recent sighting was actually on an 8 hour trip we had converted from an Orca Quest due to concerns about the weather. We managed to find orcas anyway! And that particular 8 hour trip and subsequent ones have been ON FIRE for Humpback activity. We may have to convert future Killer Whale Quests to 8 hour general whale watches, but if I were you, stay aboard for those as they come at a bit cheaper price, are often a ton of fun with Humpbacks and other sightings, and there's still orca potential on them.

Back to the topic at hand... Killer Whale Quests will be on a hiatus from mid-June through mid-August. The data suggests that our California transients may utilize higher latitudes during peak Summer and it's likely our sightings success would go down significantly if we operated in the Summer months.

Currently we do not have any dates on the calendar for the second half of May. Why is that? Well, last year the second half of May was absolutely cursed, we ran trips 5/15, 17, 18, 19: four consecutive trips with no Killer Whale sightings. For now, we are going to stay away from those days.

For some reason the first and second weeks of June there is a bit of a rebound to be expected, so we will possibly have the season's final Killer Whale quests online for May 30-June 1st and again from June 4th-June 6th.

Hopefully we can also operate another "All 8, One Day" trip sometime in May or June as well before the next opportunity which will be in August.