Whales in Banderas Bay: The Season Is a Date, Not a Guess

Most destinations tell you their whale season is “roughly winter”. Here it has a start date and an end date, published by a federal ministry, and the permits are handed out on the first morning of it.

For 2025–26 the humpback season in Banderas Bay ran from 8 December to 23 March. The same window covers Puerto Vallarta, Cabo Corrientes, Compostela and San Blas. The dates are set season by season, so check the current ones before you book a December or a March trip – but the shape of the year does not move much, and if you are here between those dates the whales are in the bay.

What the law makes the captain do

Whale watching in Mexico runs under NOM-131-SEMARNAT-2010, and its rules are specific enough to be worth knowing, because they explain a lot of what happens on the boat.

• Minimum distance: 60 metres for boats under 10 metres in length, 80 metres for medium and larger vessels.
• Boats without a permit must stay 240 metres away.
• A maximum of four boats may be around the same whale or group. Any other authorised boat waits at 240 metres until one of the four leaves.
• 30 minutes maximum with the same whale or group.
• If the whale closes the distance itself, the boat has to sit with the engine in neutral, wait for the whale to move off, and then leave slowly without sudden acceleration. Going to the humpback is not allowed; the humpback coming to the boat is.

Operators’ guides and captains have to sit a course to get the permit, and PROFEPA, the environmental enforcement agency, runs patrols during the season – there was one in Nayarit in February 2026.

There are also closed areas. For 2025–26 the authority declared a restricted zone within 1.5 kilometres of the Islas Marietas archipelago and a two-kilometre coastal strip between Punta Mita and the mouth of the Río Ameca. Those are the places the whales use with calves.

So: a good trip looks like waiting, not chasing. A captain who cuts across a whale’s line is not giving you a better day, he is risking his permit.

When in the season to go

January and February are when sightings peak, and they are when calves are around. December and late March are the shoulders of the window – still whales, fewer of them, and a real chance of a quiet morning.

Mornings are generally calmer water than afternoons here, which matters more than it sounds if anyone on board is prone to seasickness. What helps without anything from a pharmacy is an early departure, a seat towards the middle of the boat and the horizon in view; anything beyond that belongs to a pharmacist or a doctor before you travel, not to a website.

The price ladder, and what it actually buys

Our whale watching page lists 14 trips from €38.66, with a median price of €91.71. That gap is the whole story of this category.

The cheap end. The whale watching and snorkelling trip that promises three hours in its title is 3.5 hours by the supplier’s own listing, from €38.66 and includes life jackets, a guide and the 39-peso port tax, which you pay at the pier. It has 65 reviews at 3.9 stars.

That figure deserves a sentence of its own. The two cheapest whale trips here, both at €38.66, are the only two rated offerings in the category below 4 stars. Everything rated above €85 sits at 4.4 or better – though two offerings in that price band carry no rating at all yet. Small boats, more people, less shade and a shorter run out – that is what the difference is, and whether it matters to you depends on how much of a three-and-a-half-hour boat ride you are willing to spend being uncomfortable.

The middle. Whale and dolphin watching with a hydrophone is 4.5 hours from €56.96 at 4.5 stars from 24 reviews. The hydrophone is the point: humpback song is the thing people remember, and you cannot hear it over an engine.

The comfortable end. The mega yacht whale watching sunset cruise is 3 hours from €94.18 with 103 reviews at 4.7 – the best-attested trip in the category. A catamaran with open bar and meals runs 4 hours from €86.00 at 4.8 from 30 reviews.

And one to read carefully. There is a trip sold as a Whale Watching Guaranteed Experience, 3 hours from €86.99. A guarantee in this business normally means a free repeat trip rather than a refund, and the terms differ by operator. Read them on the booking page before you treat the word as a promise – no permit holder can guarantee an animal.

What nobody can promise

The whales are wild, the bay is about 42 kilometres across at its mouth, and a morning with nothing on the surface happens. Operators who talk in percentages are inventing them.

What you can reasonably expect in January or February is to see whales at a distance the law sets, for the amount of time the law allows, from a boat that has to leave when its 30 minutes are up. That is a good morning. It is not an aquarium, and the rules that make it less convenient are the reason there are still whales here to look at.

Outside the season the same boats do other work: boat trips run to 48 from €37.18 and sunset cruises to 10 from €39.66. And if you would rather be in the water than on it, the hidden beaches walk south of town works in any month.