A pod of killer whales drew stunned reactions from passengers on a Newport Beach whale-watching cruise this week.
The group aboard a Newport Landing Whale Watching trip spotted 10 to 13 orcas swimming alongside their boat on Monday in waters off Orange County, California. The sighting marks another appearance by a well-documented group of eastern tropical Pacific killer whales that researchers have tracked visiting the area across multiple years.
Newport Landing Whale Watching shared footage of the encounter on social media, noting the pod’s distinctive dorsal fins. “Killer whales can be identified from their dorsal fins and this exact pod of eastern tropical pacific killer whales has been to Newport several times before—in 2018, 2023, 2024, and 2026!,” the company posted.
Alisa Schulman-Janiger, lead biologist for the California Killer Whale Project, identified four mothers in the pod as Ana, Baja Nicki, Top Notch, and Kali. Other individuals spotted included Cookie and Coronado, according to the researcher who has tracked these animals since 1987.
The California Killer Whale Project has focused on long-term population dynamics and predation patterns across nearly four decades of research. Schulman-Janiger’s identification of individual whales by name reflects the organization’s extensive cataloging work with this particular population.
The orcas are normally native to warmer waters off Mexico and Central America. Their movement north toward Southern California has been linked to abnormally high ocean temperatures brought on by El Niño conditions.
This season’s marine sightings extend beyond killer whales. An endangered sea turtle species achieved a documented first in Orange County last week, with female olive ridleys laying eggs in two separate nests hundreds of miles outside their usual range.
NOAA Fisheries confirmed the nests in Seal Beach and Huntington Beach represent the first documented olive ridley nest ever recorded on the West Coast. The agency’s confirmation underscores the unusual nature of the event.
Earlier this year, another rare marine visitor appeared in Southern California waters. In August, a massive hammerhead shark was spotted near Malibu Pier, marking the first hammerhead sighting in the region in nearly a decade.
The convergence of these sightings points to shifting patterns in marine animal distribution along the California coast. Researchers continue monitoring how warming waters may be redrawn the boundaries of established habitats for multiple species.
The killer whale pod’s repeated returns to Newport Beach across recent years suggest the area has become a recurring destination rather than an isolated anomaly. Whale watchers with Newport Landing now have multiple opportunities to document these apex predators in local waters.