WHALE WATCHING TRAVELER · OCEAN BY OCEAN
Find the giants. Pick the right boat.
Reviews of the best whale-watching trips on earth, ocean by ocean. Tenerife’s year-round residents, the Maui humpback nursery, Iceland’s midnight-sun feeding grounds, Alaska’s bubble-net hunters and the sperm whales off Kaikoura. We read through the operators so you head out with the right crew on the right day.
Worth the journey
Three encounters tied to one ocean and no other.
Plenty of coasts will take you out to look for whales. But the year-round residents off Tenerife, the bubble-net hunters of Alaska and the deep-canyon sperm whales at Kaikoura happen on these waters and nowhere else. Start with the one that pulls you.
The Canary Islands
Resident Whales, All Year, Off Tenerife
Most of the world’s whales are seasonal visitors. The pilot whales and sperm whales off Tenerife are not. A volcanic shelf drops to nearly two kilometres deep just a short run from Costa Adeje, and a resident population lives over it the whole year round. You leave the harbour, the island falls away behind you, and within the hour you are cutting the engine beside animals that never leave. There is nowhere else in Europe you can do this in February as easily as in August.
- 1 Tenerife: Eco-Yacht Whale and Dolphin Watching and Swimming
- 2 Costa Adeje: Whale Watching Catamaran Tour with Drinks
- 3 Whale Watching Eco-Adventure from Costa Adeje
Southeast Alaska
Bubble-Net Humpbacks Among the Glaciers
In the Inside Passage off Juneau a group of humpbacks does something seen in almost no other place: they dive as a team, blow a spiralling net of bubbles to corral a shoal of herring, then erupt through the surface together with their mouths wide open. You watch it happen against a backdrop of spruce islands and tidewater glaciers, often with orcas working the same water. Summer only, when the feed is in, and worth the trip north on its own.
- 1 Juneau Wildlife Whale Watching
- 2 Juneau Wildlife Whale Watching & Mendenhall Glacier
- 3 Ultimate Juneau Whale Watch and Mendenhall Glacier View
New Zealand
Sperm Whales Where the Canyon Meets the Coast
At Kaikoura the continental shelf falls away to a mile-deep submarine canyon only a few kilometres offshore, and that trench funnels cold, food-rich water close enough that giant sperm whales hunt it year-round. You head out, the crew drops a hydrophone to listen for clicking far below, and you wait for a bull to surface, breathe for ten minutes, then lift its great square head and sound. Few places on earth put the deep ocean this close to land.
- 1 Whale Watching in Kaikoura by Boat
- 2 Kaikōura Whale Watching Scenic Flight (40 Minutes)
- 3 Whale Watching in Kaikoura – Ultimate Experience
The trip everyone books
If you only book one whale trip.
More travellers head out on this one than any other on the site. A safe first booking on an ocean you are still getting to know.
The most popular
The World’s Most Popular Whale Trips
Tenerife, Juneau, Maui, Reykjavik, Vancouver. The trips travellers head out on first, on the waters they most want to see a whale break the surface.
Where to head out
Pick your ocean.
The Canaries for whales that never leave. Alaska for bubble-net humpbacks. Hawaii for the winter nursery, Iceland for the midnight-sun feeders, Baja for the grey-whale lagoons, New Zealand for the deep-canyon sperm whales. Each ocean, with the encounters it does best.
How you want to meet them
Choose how close you get.
The kind of boat shapes the whole encounter. Three ways to meet a whale, from a steady deck with a guide to slipping into the water beside one.
Southeast Alaska
The summer the humpbacks come to feed.
Every summer the humpbacks pour into the Inside Passage to gorge on herring before the long haul back to Hawaii. Out of Juneau, Hoonah and Sitka you watch them work as a team, ringing the fish with a curtain of bubbles and bursting up through it together. Orcas patrol the same channels, eagles ride the thermals, and the boat noses up to tidewater glaciers calving into the sea. A short season, June to September, and a feeding spectacle you will not see in warmer water.
See the best Juneau whale watching tours →Arctic Norway
Orcas and humpbacks under the northern lights.
Each winter the herring pour into the fjords around Tromso and Skjervoy, and the whales follow: pods of orca working the shoals in tight formation, humpbacks lunging up through the bait balls beside them. You go out in the half-light of the polar day, mountains white to the waterline, and if the sky is clear the aurora comes out over the deck. A short, fierce season from November to January, and the most dramatic stage whale watching has.
See the best Tromso whale watching tours →The moment
You hear the blow before you see it.
The deck goes quiet, the engine drops to idle, and everyone scans the same patch of grey water. Then a breath cracks the surface a little to port, a dark back rolls up and over, and the whole boat turns as one. However many photographs you have seen, nothing prepares you for the size of it, this close, in the wild. That few seconds is the reason people fly across the world.
Browse every whale trip →The Indian Ocean
Sri Lanka holds the largest animal that ever lived.
Just off the south coast at Mirissa, the continental shelf falls away fast and the deep water comes close to shore, drawing in blue whales: thirty metres long, heavier than any dinosaur, the biggest creature in the history of the planet. From November to April the boats run out of Mirissa and Trincomalee to find them, often alongside sperm whales and spinner dolphins. Nowhere makes a blue-whale sighting this reliable from a morning trip.
- 1 Whales and Dolphins Watching-Luxury Super Grade Cruiser(Hotel Pick up offered)
- 2 Whale Watching Mirissa with ( WWC )
- 3 Whale Watching Mirissa with Eagle Eye
By time on the water
How long do you want to be out?
Some trips are a quick run to the nearest bay and back by lunch. Some take you a few hours offshore to where the whales feed. And the long ones run all day over the deep water, looking for the giants. Pick the day, we will point you at the trip.
A couple of hours
A bay trip before lunch.A short run out of the harbour to the nearest feeding ground: minkes, white-beaked dolphins, a humpback if the season is right, and back on the dock by midday.
Half a day offshore
Out to where they feed.A few hours into open water with a naturalist on board: the bubble-net circles, the slow roll of a fluke, the blow you smell before you see it. Time enough to wait for a proper encounter.
A full day on the water
Stay out for the deep-water giants.A long day over the deep shelf or the offshore canyons, where the big animals live: sperm whales, pilot pods, the chance of something rare. The trips you plan a whole journey around.
December to April
Maui turns into a humpback nursery.
Every winter thousands of humpbacks leave Alaska and swim to the warm, shallow channel between Maui, Lanai and Molokai to breed and give birth. By February the water is thick with them: mothers and calves resting close to shore, males singing below the hull, breaches going off in every direction. Most trips out of Lahaina and Maalaea barely clear the harbour before the first spout. There is no easier place on earth to see this many whales.
See all 42 Maui whale watching tours →By port
Pick a port and head out.
Tenerife for whales that stay all year. Juneau for the bubble-net humpbacks. Maui for the winter nursery. Reykjavik for the Faxafloi feeding grounds. Kaikoura for the deep-canyon sperm whales. Puerto Vallarta for the Banderas Bay humpbacks.
By region
Every ocean worth the trip.
From the Canaries to Alaska, Iceland to New Zealand, Baja to the Arctic fjords of Norway. Browse by the country whose waters you want to head out on.
From the dock to the dive
How a sighting unfolds.
Never been out before and not sure what to expect? Here is how a trip tends to flow, from the long scan of the horizon to the moment the fluke lifts and the whale is gone.
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