Orcas spotted off Southern California coast

Some parasailers got the show of a lifetime off the Catalina coast on Wednesday. The thrill-seekers spotted a pair of orcas surfacing and jumping out of the water below them while 800 feet in the air.

KTLA viewer Carlos Hernandez sent in amazing video and photos documenting the encounter.

Hernandez, who is a deckhand for Catalina Tours, said the boat was able to follow the orcas for about 20 minutes.

“I started calling some of my friends who were also working on different vessels, and they ended up catching up to them and said it was a mom and calf for a little while. Then, out of nowhere, the rest of a pod showed up, around 9 or 10 orcas.”

The orcas were traveling from the east side of the island and heading to the west side of the island.

This isn’t the first time orcas have been spotted off the Southern California coast. In December 2 023, a pod of Eastern Tropical Pacific orcas migrated up the coast from Mexico and was spotted in the waters off Orange County and Los Angeles County.

At the time of those sightings, experts said more research was needed to figure out why orcas were venturing to Southern California.

“They’re basically going where the food is. Whether they’ve just become wise to the fact that we have a lot of their food here all of a sudden might be a reason we’re seeing them,” Sarah Lesser, the Whale Watch naturalist coordinator at Long Beach’s Aquarium of the Pacific told KTLA in December 2023.

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