Sanctuary Cruises

How We Work

When you join us, you'll see how we work and how the whales respond. You will feel as though you entered their world with grace and you may well hold that in a special place inside you long after you've stepped off our boat at the dock.

Here is how we approach whales: As soon as we see their blows, or perhaps their flukes as they dive, we start angling toward them. By the time we're several hundred yards away, we slow down. The thought of being chased by any boat, power or sail, isn't pleasant to us and we can't imagine it would be to the whales.

While maintaining a respectful distance, we ease closer along their flanks or behind them, observing their surfacing patterns and sensing their rhythms so we can slowly become part of their world. We NEVER approach a whale head on, nor do we try to get extremely close to them. Should one or more come toward us, we stop.

Does this get you in position for the picture of a lifetime? Yes and no. Your best chances of great photographs come with a good telephoto lens and tremendous dedication. But that doesn't mean we don't often see whales close up. Our gentle approach, by not spooking the whales, encourages them to move around us comfortably. There are times when they surface close to us and the beauty of that is it's the whales' choice, not ours.

Every year, we have whales come up our boats to check us out. Called "friendly" behavior, this certainly shows curiousity at the very least. We see this with humpback whales the most, but we have also had gray whales, orcas and others hang by our boats. When this happens, we leave the engines in neutral so there's no chance of hurting the whales.

Dolphins are much faster moving and they often love a good bow wave ride. Imagine having thousands of dolphins head your way, converging on the bows where they can surf the pressure wave and rocketing out of the water in synchronized displays that top any human attempt at water ballet. As always, we're alert to their body language. If a pod seems intent on feeding or is a nursery pod with very small babies and appears to be protective of them, we will enjoy them from a distance.

This photo is the eye of a humpback whale. The photographer is reflected in the photo! Obviously, the whale was very comfortable with our presence.

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