Gone Whale Watching Captain Erica Sackrison was skeptical, at first, when a radio call came in alerting boaters to a possible blow from a sperm whale about 20 miles off the coast of San Diego on Sunday.
After all, sperm whales are known to live in the deep sea hundreds of miles off the coast, only briefly making appearances on the surface. And even out there, any sign of the species is rare, say Scripps scientists who study the acoustics of these marine mammals.
So when Sackrisons’ deckhand saw a 45-degree blow on the horizon — a distinct identifier for a sperm whale — the two women knew they were moments from giving their tour group of six something special.
Gone Whale Watching
Gone Whale Watching
A pair of juvenile male sperm whales about 20 miles off the coast of San Diego on Sunday, Sept. 9, 2025 as captured by Gone Whale Watching.
“It was unmistakable,” Sackrison said. “Everybody on my boat immediately sat down. We raced over.”
What the boaters witnessed was remarkable; not one but two sperm whales, likely juvenile males, swirling together in the sea. Gone Whale Watching used a non-invasive drone to capture the moment up close.
“It was just one of the coolest encounters I think I’ve ever had,” Sackrison said.
Sperm whales typically are only on the surface for brief periods before diving back to the deep to forage. Luckily for this group of boaters, another Gone Whale Watching captain had technology that helped the team relocate the whales, “which led to just an amazing afternoon and sunset situation with the largest tooth predators in the world,” the tour boat company’s owner, Domenic Biagini said.
The sighting of a sperm whale this close to the San Diego shoreline is so rare that the moment even made Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientist Natalie Posdaljian, admittedly, jealous. Even more surprising, she said, was the interaction between the two males.
Gone Whale Watching
Gone Whale Watching
A pair of juvenile male sperm whales about 20 miles off the coast of San Diego on Sunday, Sept. 9, 2025 as captured by Gone Whale Watching.
Gone Whale Watching
Gone Whale Watching
A pair of juvenile male sperm whales about 20 miles off the coast of San Diego on Sunday, Sept. 9, 2025, as captured by Gone Whale Watching.
“I know that males can come together and form these bachelor pods, but from what I understand, males are mostly solitary animals and they prefer to be alone,” Posdaljian said. “So it could be that, this is just kind of me hypothesizing, that they are younger males, so they don’t have that sexual maturity in them, those hormones that kind of force them to be solitary because they’re competitive against females.”
Posdaljian has studied sperm whales for much of her career and now uses underwater sound to better understand these creatures. Her team plans to listen to ecolocators in the deep ocean near San Diego for signs of the sperm whales’ visit.
“Sperm whales are a great indicator of ecosystem change because they’re cosmopolitan and they’re found everywhere in the world,” Posdaljian said. “So if we see animals, sperm whales doing something that they normally don’t do, and they continue to repeat this behavior, this could allow us to understand that something is changing in that environment.”
Sperm whales, like many Pacific whale species, were depleted due to commercial whaling in the 1900s. While the practice was banned in the 1970s, many species have not recovered.
Gone Whale Watching
Gone Whale Watching
The fin of a sperm whale about 20 miles off the coast of San Diego on Sunday, Sept. 9, 2025, as captured by Gone Whale Watching.
Biagini said his tour company’s last “very brief sighting” of a sperm whale was in 2019, about 100 miles off the coast of San Diego. The last sighting on record was in 2011, according to Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Sunday’s sighting turned into an all-day adventure for Sackrison, her tour group, and other boaters who heard there was a once-in-a-lifetime moment happening just miles from San Diego. Sackrison said it was “one of the coolest encounters” she’s ever had.
“Just to be able to share that with so many people — our guests, other people’s guests, like it was really, it was an awesome day on the water,” she said.
“I had six people on my boat. Two of them are from Australia. They booked this on a whim. And yeah, I mean, if you travel halfway across the globe to get sperm whales, that’s just the luckiest thing ever. I was like, ‘You guys got to go play the lottery or something,’ because that does not happen.”