Whale encounters are more likely, though, on longer Brittany Ferries voyages across the Bay of Biscay. In season, ORCA teams join every sailing of the vessels Galicia, Salamanca, Pont-Aven and Santoña, from Plymouth and Portsmouth to Santander and Bilbao, looking for fin whales, sperm whales and even the occasional blue whale as they migrate north from May, and south from September.
On the Plymouth to Santander route, 9,155 cetaceans were spotted in 2025, across 12 species, while sightings on all Brittany Ferries routes totalled more than 18,000. What’s more, ORCA has identified a hotspot for fin whales in the southern Bay of Biscay, where currents from deep-water canyons concentrate prey such as anchovy and krill, attracting more than 10,000 of the leviathans each summer to the Abyssal Plain.
That is where Galicia is right now. As holidaymakers gather around Lewis, in his conspicuous blue ORCA jacket, more dolphins appear. He goes to look and the cry goes out: “Three whales!”
I rush to the rail and train my binoculars on a trio of what could be fin, sei, minke or beaked whales, Lewis reckons. We can’t get a firm ID, but they are whales, not dolphins or porpoises. “The dorsal fin is two-thirds of the way along the body, towards the tail, rather than positioned centrally,” says Lewis.