Responsible whale watching vacations support marine conservation & local people. We have carefully screened all the whale watching tour companies and lodges on our site following conservation guidelines designed to minimise disturbance to cetaceans. There are no global guidelines for responsible whale watching - rather there are very good local guidelines which your operator must follow.
These full and frank independent Whale watching vacations reviews are from travelers who have booked directly through responsibletravel.com. They are not edited by us or any of the companies we work with. Find the real story, from real travelers below.
Excellent, I would highly recommend this to anyone who loves wilderness, culture, the landscape, interesting people, sailing, fishing, visiting a part of the world with great beauty, yet harshness, dramatic scenery, art (optional!) and getting away from our crowded world for a brief moment of paradise in a different climate.
(more)Simply breathtaking. The scenic beauty, the wonderful accommodations, the fantastic tours all added up to create a lifetime of memories.
(more)Excellent! Every aspect was amazing. My partner and I are both deeply grateful to everyone who works for the operator for making such a special and memorable experience. We will almost certainly be booking up again! (more)An excellent vacation that was well organised, friendly and informative...The most memorable part was a three hour trip out with three whole hours with a pod of Bottle Nose dolphins. The BEST THREE HOURS OF MY LIFE!!!!!!! Fantastic! (more)Beautiful scenery, great conditions for sailing. We had a wonderful and entertaining guide to local customs and cuisine from Sotiris our skipper. (more)We invite every traveler who books a vacation via us to send in a review. Because we don't run the vacations they're completely independent and unedited... remember to read between the lines though, as two people on the same vacation can have different views!
"Descending through the clouds I was shocked out of my artificial aircraft-cabin-induced comfort by the bleak snow-covered wilderness of Norway's fjords and impressive coastline. The orange glow on the horizon was a reminder that we were north of the Arctic Circle and that despite the hour, a little after two in the afternoon, darkness would soon be upon the land. The landscape below looked impressive but above all cold and I was filled with trepidation about my forthcoming encounter with killer whales, especially as I intended to get into the water with them.
Was I mad? Was I really about to do this? And yet some twenty-four hours later, emerging from the icy water, having just confronted the whales in their own territory, I was of a very different frame of my mind."
Read the rest of Justin's experience in this whale watching article.
Whale watching is becoming increasingly popular and we believe its a great way to show that whales are a valuable asset to the tourism industry and should be protected. In this article, our friends at WhaleSwim Adventures share their thoughts and discuss the threats to humpback whales. "The iconic humpback whale is much loved by whale watchers throughout the world and one of the most researched species of cetacean (whales, dolphins and porpoises). The haunting song produced by male humpbacks even found its way onto the Voyager space probes, carrying messages from Earth into the far reaches of space. The International Whaling Commission (IWC) recognises that more knowledge is required for reliable population estimates of many of the Southern Hemisphere stocks. An estimated 8,000 - 13,000 humpbacks annually visit the south-west South Pacific, and some 2,300 of these calve and mate in the sheltered tropical waters of Tonga."
Find out more about whales in this whale watching article.
