Brazil Trails Eco & Sports Vacation | Whale Watching

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The Garopaba town, which is 80 km south from Florianopolis, the beautiful island off the Brazilian southern coast, hosts a noble visitor every year from June to December: the Arctic Right Whales (Eubalaena mysticetus). These whales come to our coast to give birth and feed their young. Here is their natural birth place, since they find calm water and good water temperature.

There used to be 100.000 Arctic right Whales in the South Hemisphere and today there are only about 7.000 of this kind left. During many decades they were hunted for commercial purposes: the fins were used as corsets and their fat was made into oil for lightening the cities and manufacturer of mortar. The Santa Martha´s lighthouse, a city further south, hosts the highest builiding built with whale oil.

The last whale tackle in Brazil was shut down in Brazil in 1973. It used to be in Imbituba. It has been rebuilt and it is protected as the only Right Whale Latin-American museum. Nowadays this species can be found along the coast of Argentina, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Uruguay and Brazil.

The boat tour to watch the whales depart from Garopaba or Imbituba, depending on where the whales are located in the day of the tour. We keep in contact with the biologists of the whale´s project, and they inform us where exactly the whales are, and how is the sea & weather conditions.