El Niño brings pod of 13 Killer whales to Newport Beach

A group of whale watchers was left stunned in Orange County after they discovered a pod of killer whales swimming next to their boat.

People aboard a Newport Landing Whale Watching cruise spotted 10 to 13 orcas, also known as killer whales, in Newport Beach Monday.

Normally native to the waters off Mexico and Central America, these marine apex predators moved north toward Southern California due to abnormally high ocean temperatures brought on by El Niño.

“Killer whales can be identified from their dorsal fins and this exact pod of eastern tropical pacific killer whales has been to Newport several times before—in 2018, 2023, 2024, and 2026!,” Newport Landing Whale Watching posted on social media along with a video of the rare sighting.

Alisa Schulman-Janiger, lead biologist for the California Killer Whale Project, identified four mothers in the pod as Ana, Baja Nicki, Top Notch, and Kali alongside other individuals including Cookie and Coronado, the LA Magazine reported.

The organization has been tracking these animals since 1987, focusing on long-term population dynamics and predation patterns.

Killer whales aren’t the only marine animal sightings this El Niño season. An endangered sea turtle species pulled off a stunning first in Orange County last week, laying eggs in two separate nests hundreds of miles outside the animal’s usual stomping grounds.

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The female olive ridleys have made history with nests documented in Seal Beach and Huntington Beach, according to NOAA Fisheries, which says it is the first documented olive ridley nest ever recorded on the West Coast.

Earlier this year in August, a massive hammerhead shark was also spotted near Malibu Pier. It marked the first hammerhead sighting in Southern California in nearly a decade.