Harbor Breeze Cruises has been sailing Long Beach Harbor for over three decades
Founded by Dan Salas, the company has grown into Southern California's best-known whale watching operator.
Harbor Breeze Cruises was founded in 1990 by Dan Salas, a former tugboat captain, and has operated out of Rainbow Harbor — docked between the Aquarium of the Pacific and Shoreline Village — for more than three decades since. The company describes itself as family-owned and as Los Angeles' original whale watch and harbor tour operator.
The fleet has grown from a single vessel into a lineup of custom-built catamarans, several purpose-built for whale watching with stadium seating and low-emissions engines designed to minimize disturbance to marine life. Harbor Breeze runs narrated 45-minute harbor tours past the Queen Mary and the decommissioned Soviet submarine Scorpion, along with year-round whale watching trips that partner with Aquarium of the Pacific educators to narrate sightings of gray, blue, and humpback whales.
Long Beach sits beside the Catalina Channel, a deep-water corridor between the coast and Catalina Island that draws feeding and migrating whales close to shore — part of why the city has become one of the more reliable whale watching destinations on the West Coast, and why a company built entirely around getting people out on that water has been able to stay in business for over 30 years.
The company has since expanded operations to San Pedro's West Harbor as well, extending trips along the coast from Santa Monica down to Newport Beach.