The Whale Watching Funchal Season, Month by Month

The reassuring part first

Madeira does not have a whale watching season in the way that many destinations do, where the animals arrive in spring and are gone by autumn and a trip outside those months is pointless. The operator puts it plainly: through the year Madeira has different aquatic mammals journeying through its waters, and whether you come in summer or winter the chances are high that you will see one of them.

That claim rests on two separate facts. The first is that the most commonly seen animals here are residents rather than visitors. The second is that Madeira sits in the open Atlantic on routes that different migratory species use at different times, so the cast changes across the year rather than emptying out.

The residents, who never leave

Bottlenose dolphins are the backbone of any month. They live around the island in groups that range from a handful to several dozen, they are large and robust and easy to see, and they are the species most likely to come and ride the bow wave. Common dolphins are also present year round, smaller and faster and travelling in bigger, more scattered groups.

Short-finned pilot whales deserve a mention alongside them because they are often present in stable social groups around the island rather than passing through. They are technically dolphins despite the name, and seeing a group of them logging at the surface is one of the more atmospheric sightings available here.

Winter, December to March

Funchal in January averages twenty degrees by day, which makes this the mildest winter of anywhere in Europe and means a boat trip is a perfectly pleasant thing to do. The residents are all still here, so a winter cruise is not a lesser version of a summer one where the wildlife is concerned.

What changes is the sea and the swim. Winter brings the biggest Atlantic swells, generated by weather systems far to the north, and the occasional day when a trip does not run. The swim stop belongs to the summer season, so a winter cruise is a watching trip rather than a swimming one. February is the wettest month at eighty-six millimetres.

Spring, April to June

This is the driest stretch of the entire year and it is remarkable: April, May and June each average six millimetres of rain. The air warms steadily from twenty-one degrees in April to nearly twenty-four in June, and the sea begins its slow catch-up behind it.

For wildlife this is a building period. The residents are joined by more migratory movement as the year warms, and the sea state settles from the winter pattern into something much more predictable. If you want the highest chance of clear settled weather with good visibility for spotting, these are the months to aim at.

Summer and early autumn, July to October

The peak in almost every sense. July records no rainfall at all on the Funchal average and August only four millimetres, air temperatures reach twenty-seven degrees in August, and the sea is at its warmest in August and September because the ocean lags the air by roughly two months.

This is also when the species list is at its widest, and when the swim stop is running. The reviews for this trip cluster heavily in July and August, and they are full of people who saw both dolphins and whales in the same three hours. If you have a free choice of month and you want everything the trip can offer, come now.

Does the weather change what you see

Less than you would think, and not in the way most people assume. Rain is close to irrelevant on a three-hour boat trip in a place that gets so little of it. What matters is the sea surface, because spotting a dorsal fin or a blow depends on being able to pick a small disturbance out of the water.

A flat calm makes everything visible from a long way off. A choppy sea full of whitecaps hides animals that are right there, which is why a calm day genuinely improves your odds rather than just your comfort. That is the strongest argument for the settled months rather than any migration pattern.

So which month

If you want the best combination of warm sea, calm water, the widest range of species and a swim included, come between July and October. That is the peak for good reasons rather than marketing ones, and the trip is at its fullest then.

If you are here in winter, book it anyway. The dolphins that make up most sightings are resident, the boat runs, and twenty degrees in January on a catamaran off Madeira is a better day than almost anything else available in Europe at that time of year. What you lose is the swim, not the wildlife.

One note on the figures used above. They come from the NOAA station at Funchal, less than six kilometres from the marina, averaged across the thirty years to 2020. That is genuinely local data for the south coast, and it describes a typical month rather than forecasting a particular afternoon.

Before you book