Monterey Bay Whale Watch — Attraction in Monterey

What a fantastic experience from start to finish. We went out on the Blackfin and I paid a bit extra ($97) for premium viewing on the top deck. Although honestly, the less expensive seating down on the main deck was also terrific viewing, less breezy and if you’re prone to seasickness, it a more stable surface. Blackfin is obviously a well kept vessel, it was clean and there were crew members always right at hand to help out and answer questions. I didn’t make use of it, but they have a nice snack bar on the main deck where you could get hot or cold drinks, snacks or a cup of hot soup.

The captain obviously knew his business inside and out and did a great job maneuvering us as close to whales and dolphins as legally allowed (they are protected by the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act and you cannot approach them closely, but they can approach you). Just as important, he was considerate not to ever block an animal’s path, turned the engine to idle or even off entirely when appropriate and never started underway when an animal was anywhere near the propellers. I appreciate that.

We went out on the four hour trip, which was plenty unless it’s the season to go out farther and maybe luck out seeing the rarer sightings such as blue whales or orcas. Nevertheless, did we have a great trip! We saw probably a hundred sea lions on the breakwater wall leaving the harbor and within a few minutes, saw our first pair of humpback whales moseying along and showing us their flukes as they went down on a deeper dive. We were surrounded by a megapod of several hundred common dolphins, jumping, flipping and surfing on the bow’s pressure wave and saw dozens of babies staying close to mama.

The jackpot of the day was when a pair of humpbacks decided they were as curious about us as we were about them and spent an HOUR circling the boat, surfacing almost within touching distance to have a good look (not exaggerating here) multiple times, and crossing back and forth underneath the boat to give themselves a friendly scritch off the keel. They were clearly comfortable and relaxed, could have left at any time, but never showed any attempts to evade us. I have a ton of video of them barely moving on the surface and circling back for another look. I never knew before what humpback whale breath smells of, but now I do!

There is an excellent photographer onboard taking photos, so if you didn’t get that perfect shot yourself, he probably got it for you. You can see the album in the shop afterwards and get the entire packet sent in very large files (good enough as a screen saver or to print out) for a very reasonable $30 emailed to you within the next hour or so. Nice! They also have a nice selection of good quality sweatshirts, t-shirts, hat, photo prints and so on, also reasonably priced and good quality.

Next season when the orcas and maybe even blues are more likely to be in town, I can’t wait to book one of the all day trips. This one was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I can’t offer even the first bit of constructive criticism. Truly outstanding.

Note: I’ve read some of the one-star reviews and they all have to do with either seasickness, big swells, or both. Duh. They give everyone fair warning and advice to take sea sickness tabs at least an hour ahead of departure, they have more onboard or in their shop, and they have ginger candies (which are actually very effective) onboard, along with sea sick bags and so on. What part of You’re Going Out Onto Open Ocean was not clear? It might sound like I’m being unsympathetic, but here’s the thing—-I am INCREDIBLY prone to motion sickness. If I don’t take precautions, I will be miserable on a smooth one-hour flight, on ANY boat on glass seas and even driving my own car up a semi-winding road. So what’s my magic that I still had a good time? Duh (again). I took some over-the-counter medication well ahead of time. And I had an absolute blast when others didn’t, because they didn’t read the information send ahead, or thought they knew better. It was your...

Update: Monterey Bay Whale Watch is 100% lying in their reply to me, which is even more disappointing. The woman who was working the desk when we arrived to check in thirty minutes before our scheduled tour admitted that they had not sent me an email in advance, which is why she provided the vouchers. They sent a follow up email after this conversation confirming the cancellation to cover their tracks. Nice try, though.

Very disappointed in Monterey Bay Whale Watch that our trip was canceled and we were not given any notice until we arrived to check in. My mom and I took a tour with them five years ago and had a decent time - we saw several humpback whales and a lot of dolphins. However, we didn’t see any orcas that time, and since then, we have always talked about taking another trip to try to see them. When I had the opportunity to come back out to the Bay Area on a work trip, we jumped at the chance to book another tour, even extending our trip by a day (requiring me to take an extra day off work, as well as additional hotel and rental car fees) just for this.

Fast forward to Sunday the day of our tour, we arrived at Monterey Bay Whale Watch half an hour before the tour’s start time as per the recommendation in the confirmation email, and found out our tour had been canceled. At first, the person at the counter said it was canceled because their vessel was broken. However, when they realized that they had not sent me any kind of advance notice about the cancellation as they originally claimed, they added to the story that no boats were going out that afternoon at all due to strong winds.

I understand that cancellations happen for tours like this, especially for the weather, but it was a beautiful day out, so based on our limited knowledge of appropriate conditions, we had no reason to assume the weather might be an issue. The all-day tour was also returning just as we were informed about our tour’s cancellation, and had in fact posted videos on Instagram less than thirty minutes before we arrived that didn’t mention anything about other tours being canceled. In my opinion, there is no excuse for them not notifying us ahead of time, especially if part of the reason for the cancellation was that their vessel was out of service. They told us that they had already had to cancel hundreds of tours that weekend, which implies that they had known the boat was broken since at least Friday, and our tour was Sunday afternoon. We also only signed and submitted our liability waivers online Sunday morning, which you would think would have clued them in that we had not received a cancellation notice.

They did offer a full refund in addition to vouchers for another tour, which I appreciate (even though they only provided the vouchers after we informed them we live out of state and would therefore be unlikely to use them any time soon), but this still does not make up for the wasted time driving down to Monterey from San Francisco, the wasted money on gas, or the fact that we had already taken Dramamine before we found out about the cancellation, and were therefore too tired to do something else to celebrate the last day of our trip in place of whale watching.

In conclusion, we had been looking forward to this for five years, and it was extremely disappointing not just that the tour was cancelled, but that the company clearly had prior knowledge of their need to cancel and did not let us know ahead of time so we could make alternate plans for the day. They were obviously not too busy to verify that every customer had been notified and showed very little regard for how much our plans had been disrupted. Even with the vouchers, I will definitely look into other options the next time I want to go whale watching in the Bay Area. And if you have already booked with this company and are not local to the Monterey area, call first before you...

A little disappointed with our trip overall. I had dreamt of going on this trip for years, saved up to travel from the UK, in hope to see Orcas (one of my favourite animals) in person.

We paid extra to sit up top, as I know from experience this gives the best few. However, the seats up top were hard, cold, iron benches with no back (just railings) and no padding. I could see other companies boats that had much more comfortable seating, for almost $100 per ticket, this was uncomfortable, especially after 3/4 hours at sea. Aside from that, there was quite a lot of bird poo, which I appreciate cannot be avoided but it would've been nice if the crew could have cleaned them up a bit before we got on. I appreciate we could have sat downstairs, indoors with better seating, but then why bother paying the extra?

Seating aside, we headed out and came across some humpbacks within around 30 minutes. We sat for about 15 mins watching them come up a couple of times before the crew announced "they come up every 6 mins or so, so we want to find you some more active whales" and we left. About an hour in we came across some bairds beaked whales, which the team announced were super rare to see as they were long divers (going down for around 10+ minutes at a time). We sat and waited for them to resurface, and got a good view of them. Once they dived again I assumed we would head off (to find more active whales as before), but we stayed for another resurfacing. After 2 surfaces I really hoped we would leave, but the crew kept talking about how rare these whales were to see. We ended up sitting at one spot for almost an hour, with around 45 minutes of that hour spent staring at nothing waiting for them to come back up.

We then had to head back in land as our trip was coming to an end, and on the way we came across a humpback and her calf who was doing acrobatics. Jumping, slapping its tail around, super exciting to see. But the crew came over the speaker after about 5 mins with these whales and said 'we are running out of time so had to leave'. So we left the most exciting and fun encounter of the day after 5 mins, despite spending 45 mins looking at nothing?! While I appreciate it is a rare to see the beaked whales and the crew wanted to collect data, its hard not to feel short changed when you spend a third of your trip in the same spot, minimising the chance of seeing any other species. The crew mentioned that seeing the albatrosses around was a good sign for seeing Orca's but as we didn't move from this spot for an hour, I felt we missed our chance to see much at all. The crew kept saying how they see humpbacks a lot so wanted more exciting whales, but we (the customers) don't, thats why I've spent thousands holidaying to a destination that has them, and then paying almost $200 for two felt a lot when we sailed away from a very active whale because we wasted time elsewhere.

I chose this company because I knew they were the oldest in the bay. I had followed them and some of their crew on instagram for years. But it was actually quite a disappointing trip over all, and I probably wouldn't rush to go...