SAN DIEGO ( KSWB ) — A San Diego whale watching tour had a thrilling encounter on Sunday as it came across the pod of killer whales that has been circling the waters off the Southern California coast.
The eastern tropical Pacific orcas were seen near La Jolla by Pacific Offshore Expeditions, marking the latest in a rare surge of sightings in the region since early December.
A video of the Jan. 28 sighting can be seen in the video player above.
Over the last two months, there have been dozens of recorded sightings by whale watching tours as they play with boats and hunt dolphins, as well as a few gray whale calves.
Experts say the killer whales are also the likely culprit in the death of a 52-foot, juvenile fin whale that washed onto a San Diego shore on Dec. 10 — just one day before the pod’s first sighting in Palos Verdes on Dec. 11 .
How orca sightings and the 52-foot whale beached in San Diego may be connected
After that initial sighting, the pod was seen up in Oxnard on Dec. 15, before coming back down to San Diego on Dec. 18 . Before the most recent San Diego sighting, they were last spotted swimming alongside boats in Newport Beach on Jan. 4 and Jan. 9.