Most visitors to America's Finest City show up, hit the beach, maybe stop at the zoo then go home, but others? Well, they never leave.
So after the third or so sighting of a pod of killer whales, this time off La Jolla on Christmas Day, some are wondering if, like the juvenile great white sharks that have transformed Torrey Pines into their personal playpen, the orcas may just stick around, too, despite San Diego's skyrocketing home prices.
Off San Diego's Coast
North Parker Natalia Jepsen was with her daughter, Kaia, sister Roslyn Cassidy and their mom on Christmas morning after having snapped up four tickets on Groupon for 30 bucks apiece to go whale watching. The quartet boarded a boat in Mission Bay and, in no time, SD Whale Watch was as good as its name, paying off with what was a gray whale about a mile out.
Get top local stories in San Diego delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC San Diego's News Headlines newsletter.
Natalia and her crew had their hopes set on seeing dolphins, though, specifically the largest member of the Orcinus genus, the killer whale (not really a whale at all), which in recent weeks was accused of terrifying a juvenile fin whale (at 52 feet, still much bigger than the orcas) into fatally beaching itself in Pacific Beach, as well as feasting on dolphins off the coast of La Jolla. The family's maritime Christmas hosts, though, tamped down expectations, estimating their chances of a sighting of the sleek black-and-white sea beasts at less than 1%.
"I had been at, like, a Christmas party the night before and talked to friend who was like, 'Oh, I been out there' -- it wasn't in San Diego, it was in the LA area," Roslyn said, "and she had actually seen the same scene where the orca pod was, like, hunting down the bottlenose dolphins, and I was like, 'We're not gonna see that. It's not gonna happen again. There's just no way.' "
Boy, were they wrong.
Instead, about 20 minutes into their trip, their whale watch turned into a killer-whale watch for the next hour and a half. A pod of five of the marine mammals first sauntered near their boat just north of Windansea Beach. The family said they had the sea mostly to themselves since it was Christmas Day, with just a couple of fishing boats and some marine biologists on a watercraft sharing the view.
"The orcas are huge, 17 feet long," Rosalyn said. "I have a video of them swimming directly under the boat…. Way bigger than the boat, the tour boat. So they swam under the boat. They were just playing with each other. I think I have a video of one of them flipping and rolling around. They're extremely playful and were super friendly."
It wasn't long though, before the mood of the day turned as the orcas, with a juvenile or two in tow, broke off to hunt some nearby dolphins, which may have been bottlenose but could also have been long-beaked common dolphins, which are living off the coast of California by the tens of thousands. Either way, their earlier playfulness seemed to transition to "playing" with their food, the family said, when they gave chase to the dolphins, which the orcas would loft in the air and bump with their snouts before finally eating them.
It's no surprise that the orcas are around now, NOAA Fisheries spokesman Michael Milstein told NBC 7 on Wednesday, pointing out that they have been making local appearances for a few years now.
The marine mammals off San Diego's coast are referred to as Eastern Tropical Pacific killer whales and, while Milstein said their exact range is not known, they have been seen previously in Mexico in the Gulf of California/Sea of Cortez and have been spotted with increasing frequency off Southern California in the winter, likely because of the presence of those dolphins.
And how long can we expect these visitors to San Diego waters to stay on this trip?
"In terms of timeframe, the killer whales have been most present in recent years in the winter months," Milstein said. "There is no specific timeframe attached to that but that has been the pattern we have seen."
Milstein did mention another dietary supplement for orcas that has a growing population in San Diego they could be interested in: They might "also take advantage of opportunities to prey on other species such as sea lions or seals, but they have been most often seen going after dolphins."
What San Diegans have a front-row seat to, Milstein said, is a conservation success story.
"Whales and other marine mammals were hunted almost to extinction in some cases, but they now have strong protection from the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act," Milstein said. "That has allowed them to recover to the point that their populations are doing very well and are continuing to increase. That, in turn, is attracting predators, such as killer whales."
That recovery also means more dolphins — and likely more visits by killer whales.
"… they are finding ample prey," Milstein said. "They remember that, and return in successive years."
