One of the rarest encounters left on Earth — and the team built around finding it.
Swimming with wild orcas in the Sea of Cortez is not a check-the-box excursion. The animals we look for are wide-ranging apex predators moving through thousands of square miles of open ocean on their own schedule — not ours. If you want to find them, really find them, you need a team that has built its entire operation around that single, uncompromising goal.
That is what we do. It is the only thing we do. And unlike most operators, we publish our entire daily log so you can see exactly what a week with us tends to deliver.
What a week with us looks like
When you book with us, you are booking a six-day week on the water. The most useful question is not "how many orca did you see all season?" It is: what happens during a week?
Here is what the 2025 log actually shows, week by week:
In 2025, 14 of our 16 weeks delivered at least one orca day. A typical week brought about two. Our best week, the first week of June, brought five orca days in a row. A second peak week in late July brought four. Only two weeks — both hit by unusual weather systems — finished without an orca encounter.
Which is why we tell every guest the same thing: book the full week. On a six-day trip, the odds are heavily in your favor — but even a "typical" two-orca-day week doesn't always translate into two in-water encounters. Orcas can be fast, shy, or spotted too late in the day. Some weeks the first orca day is Tuesday; some weeks it is Saturday. More sea days, more shots on goal. That is the whole math.
If a company is promising guaranteed orca swims, they are promising you something the ocean cannot deliver. We would rather earn your trust with honesty than lose it with a sales pitch.
What a great week looks like
Averages are one thing. The log entries are another. A handful of weeks from 2025 that go beyond anything a brochure can promise.
Two predation events for the ages
Two straight days of 10–15 orcas hunting. Monday they took down a minke whale. Tuesday our guests swam while orcas fed on a humpback. Two of the most extraordinary predation events ever captured in this region, filmed from the boat and the drone.
False killer whales, sperm whales, Baird's beaked whales
False killer whales and 40 sperm whales in one day. Baird's beaked whales — one of the rarest encounters in the ocean — the next. Three hours of orcas hunting sea turtles on Thursday, guests in and out of the water the entire time.
Our best week of the year — five orca days in six
Monday's entry: one male orca at 8:30 a.m., then the plane finds 13 more; we're with them until 6 p.m. Wednesday: 10 hours on orcas, 20+ drops. Thursday: two pods, 20+ orcas total, hunting side by side. Saturday: 12 orcas hunting sea turtles in the morning, then relocated at 4 p.m. and found again.
Four orca days, a thresher shark take-down, a brand-new family
Tuesday: 15 orcas in crystal-clear water took down a thresher shark in front of the group. Wednesday: orcas and 50+ silky sharks. Thursday: a different family — calmer, chill, five-plus hours of water time. Saturday: a brand-new family we'd never met, led by a massive male.
30+ orcas across three families, two hours in the water
And already in the 2026 season opener: April 12 brought us 30+ orcas across three family groups, 10/10 quality, two hours in the water. April 13 and 14 followed with more drops. The new season is already writing log entries like these.
None of that is normal. All of it is on the log. Go read it.
Why we find them when others don't
Those 14 out of 16 weeks didn't happen by luck. They happened because every morning we put real resources against a very hard problem — and kept doing it, day after day, all season long.
We pack fuel like no other boat in the region
Fuel is what decides whether you get the encounter of a lifetime or watch it unfold on somebody else's camera roll. When a spotter radios a sighting forty miles away, the only acceptable answer is "on our way." Not "we're low." Not "we'll see if we can make it." On our way. It is one of the least glamorous line items on our budget and one of the single biggest reasons we find animals when others turn back.
We run aerial spotter planes — daily
The Sea of Cortez is too big to search from the surface alone. A boat at cruising speed can cover a narrow corridor; a plane can scan hundreds of square miles of water in the same window. Our pilots read the surface for the tells — bait balls, bird behavior, wakes, blows — and talk to our captain in real time. Without the plane, the ocean is simply too large for the math to work.
We stay out, all day
Our sea days are long. Not "morning tour, back for lunch" long. Full, committed, sun-up-until-the-light-goes days on the water. Check the log: "found orcas at 5 p.m., got four drops before sunset" and "returned to shore at 2:30, relaunched at 4:15 when the plane radioed nine more." You cannot swim with an orca that showed up at 4 p.m. if your boat is docked at 2.
Look at our June 2 entry: a single male orca at 8:30 a.m., then our plane radios 13 more forty-plus minutes away — we were on them by 2 p.m. and in the water until 6. You cannot run that day on a boat that can't cover ground.
What you are really paying for
When you compare our trip to a cheaper option, it is tempting to see two tours and a price difference. That is not what you are looking at. You are looking at two very different bets.
A cheaper tour has to cut somewhere. The ocean is indifferent to marketing; it charges the same for fuel whether the brochure is glossy or not. So the savings come out of the things that actually move the needle: fewer hours on the water, shorter range, no aerial support, older boats that can't cover ground, captains who can't afford to chase a distant lead. Those cuts are invisible on a website. They are brutally visible when you are sitting in a boat watching a lifetime encounter happen fifteen miles away from a hull that cannot get there.
We do not cut those corners. Full stop. Every dollar of the premium you pay for our trip is going into the things that raise your odds — fuel range, flight hours, captain time, boat maintenance, crew experience, and the small-group logistics that let us react in minutes instead of hours. That is how a typical week on our boat finds orca and a cheaper week rolls the dice.
If orca encounters were easy, everyone would deliver them. They are not. And the gap between a tour that is set up to find them and a tour that is set up to sell the idea of finding them is the gap between a trip you remember forever and a trip you wish you had invested in properly.
Who this trip is for
Let us be direct about who thrives with us — and who doesn't.
This is your trip if you are:
- A photographer who has waited years for this shot
- A diver or freediver who has swum with everything else and wants the encounter that redefines the rest
- A traveler who would rather spend six real days hunting something extraordinary than six easy days looking at something ordinary
- Someone who understands "best possible chance" is the honest language here — not "guaranteed"
- Ready for long days, salt in your eyes, and the possibility of the single most extraordinary in-water encounter on the planet
This is not your trip if you want:
- A quick boat ride and a polished on-shore experience
- A photo with a certificate at the end
- Guaranteed encounters and a tightly scheduled day
- An easy, low-effort holiday
There are cheaper, easier tours for that, and they are perfectly fine at what they do. They are just not doing what we do.
Alongside the orcas, a typical week in our 2025 log also delivered blue whales, fin whales, humpbacks, sperm whales, false killer whales, Baird's beaked whales, pilot whales in pods of 500+, mobula ray mega-aggregations, oceanic mantas, whale sharks over 35 feet, bottlenose and Risso and rough-toothed dolphins, sea lions — and on one unforgettable Monday, a Japetella octopus at the surface. This is the richest blue-water theater on Earth, and we are set up to take you deep into it.
The orcas are out there. Let's go find them — properly.
— Orca Swims BajaWhat it comes down to
We built this operation around one simple idea: take the rarest encounter on the ocean seriously, and give our guests every possible advantage in finding it.
That means more fuel. More flight hours. Longer days. Smaller groups. A better boat. A captain who has earned his reputation one sea day at a time. And a public log that tells you the truth, week by week, before you ever book.
Book the full week. Read the log. Come with your eyes open and your expectations honest. We will do the rest.
Ready to find them — properly?
Small groups fill up quickly. Reserve your spot for the season — and read the log first if you want to see what a week with us tends to deliver.
Orca Swims Baja · La Ventana, Baja California Sur, Mexico · The most experienced team in the region. The honest math. The trip of a lifetime.
Your Tour Organizer: Nadia Aly
Our tours are managed by Nadia Aly, who is an award winning underwater photographer who leads numerous expeditions around the world throughout the year.