Blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) are currently listed as Endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List. Collisions with ships are an ongoing threat to their recovery. The goal of the WhaleWatch project was to create a near real-time tool predicting whale occurrence and densities in US West Coast waters to identify high-use areas and help reduce whale mortality from ship strikes. We combined remotely sensed environmental data and satellite telemetry of blue whales to create a habitat preference model and near real-time tool. During the development of WhaleWatch, several key lessons were learned: the importance of end user involvement in product development; the requirement of large telemetry data sets to describe species distributions over multiple years; the critical need for satellite-derived environmental data to develop the habitat model and to operationalise predictions based on current ocean conditions; the relevance of assessing biological realism versus statistical model fit in habitat models; the value of evaluating model performance using independent data sets; and the benefit of automation to improve sustainability beyond the lifetime of the initial development project. These near real-time tools will require regular evaluation and updating in response to changes in climate that alter the relationships between ocean conditions and marine species habitat use.