Posted by Dylan Walker 1 November 2010

There was understandable outrage from campaigning and conservation organisations this summer as the Icelandic whaling company Hrefnuveidimenn, which hunts Minke Whales and sells the meat on the domestic market, announced that it was planning to offer whaling tours alongside its hunting programme.

The story was met with considerable disdain, and reported as something between a sick joke and a wild publicity stunt. But amidst the mud slinging, what everybody seemed to have missed, in my opinion, was possibly the biggest positive news story for whale conservation in Iceland in recent years.

Although the idea of whaling tours may seem callous and macabre, could they also represent a first step on the road to a more positive attitude towards whales as living resources? Perhaps even the first move towards watching and educating people about whales for commercial gain rather than hunting them for a living?

Whether  Hrefnuveidimenn realise this or are simply attempting to bolster support for the whaling industry is immaterial. The fact is that by welcoming the public onboard their vessel, engaging with people about whales, and attempting to field questions, they will find themselves discussing and debating, and possibly even re-evaluating their attitudes and their business.

It would be easy to be sceptical about the seemingly giant leap from whaling to whale watching, but it is important to take account the fact that it has happened before, and not just once. Try visiting the beautiful islands of the Azores in the mid Atlantic, where ex-whalers still make use of their tremendous experience by directing tourist boats to surfacing Sperm Whales from clifftop viewing towers called Vigias. Or sail out with some of Japan‘s finest whale watch operators; experienced ex-whalers who are incredibly passionate about these charismatic mammals.

It is possible to go from whaling to whale watching and never look back. It has happened, it could happen again, and if you read between the lines in the statements from Hrefnuveidimenn‘s managing director, Gunnar Bergmann Jónsson‘s to newspaper Fréttabladid, these guys just might be the first modern-day Icelandic whalers to do just that:

“We are offering whale watching with whale hunters. We want to show people how whaling takes place without hunting the animals. We want to show the entire process, let people get to know us whalers, shoot from the guns and serve them whale meat,” Jónsson described.

“We can use the boat without changing it much and arrange it in such a way that we can go whale hunting and do tours in between. The only change is that the centre deck has been accommodated as an exhibition hall where we show people the organs of whales, such as the heart, and other organs that we store in formalin,” he elaborated.

Jónsson is excited about the new project which he believes is unique in the world. “There are people involved with this company who have hunted whales since the 1960s but they have never done anything like this.”

“We will hunt one more animal tomorrow and then we will stop hunting for now and concentrate on tourism,” he concluded.

And the final sentence is the most revealing: a statement that confirms that whaling and tourism are mutually exclusive; a statement that reveals that an Icelandic whaling company is considering other forms of revenue; a statement that indicates that there may be more to the livelihoods of Gunnar Bergmann Jónsson and his colleagues than hunting whales; and a statement that suggests that just maybe, taking a whaling tour with Hrefnuveidimenn could be one of the best ways to promote whale watching and whale conservation instead of whaling in Iceland today.

As Jónsson said, “...and then we will stop hunting for now and concentrate on tourism.”

About the author

Dylan Walker is at the heart of the Planet Whale project

Posted by Stefan Austermühle 30 September 2010

I must admit, that when my wife Nina sent me her first email 15 years ago (in the pre-Google Earth age) asking for advice on her campaign in Peru against the killing of 15,000 dolphins a year for human consumption, I had to look on the map to realize that Peru actually has 3,500 km of coastline.  Peru is globally known for its record-breaking rainforest biodiversity: more than 1800 bird species (10% of the world’s), more than 10% of the worlds mammal species, more than 4,500 butterfly species (20% of the worlds total), 35,000 vascular plant species and so on.  However, little is known about the ocean off Peru.

After reaching Nina’s goal to legally prohibit the killing of dolphins, we founded the Peruvian conservation group Mundo Azul (Blue World) in 1999, and in 2001 started battling the ongoing illegal dolphin slaughter costing the lives of about 3,000 dolphins a year until now.  But when journalists asked me how many dolphins were left I could only wonder - so we set out to find an answer.  In 2006 we started Peru’s first ever large scale and continuous photo-identification effort, being financed to date in great part by regular volunteer based marine surveys.

Given the fact that Peru has one of the world’s biggest fisheries - extracting 10% of the global fish catch each year - it should not come as a surprise that humans were not the first to know that there is a lot of fish around.  For millions of years more than 26 albatross and petrel species have chosen New Zealand, Africa and the Galapagos Islands as their favorite breeding grounds, but they actually spent the far bigger part of their lives feeding in the world’s most productive ocean off Peru.  Marine turtles too feed and live here, showing up on their breeding beaches in Central America just long enough to leave their eggs, before travelling back to their feeding grounds off Peru.

So it’s no wonder that in Peruvian waters more than 30 species of whales and dolphins can be found - around 37% of all cetacean species on our planet: Bottlenose Dolphins, Dusky Dolphins and two species of Common Dolphins, transient Orcas, Sperm Whales, Bryde’s Whales, Fin Whales and Sei Whales are around all year-long for example.  Others like Blue Whales and Humpbacks migrate along the coast twice a year, plus in the northern rainforest we have the Amazon River Dolphins and the Tucuxi.

Now in our fourth year of Bottlenose Dolphin research, we have identified more than 1,500 different animals in just 200 km of coastline between Lima and Paracas, more than 600 of them being residents of the area.  That is an average of 7 dolphins per kilometer, or 3 resident dolphins per kilometre of coastline - surely one of the highest Bottlenose Dolphin densities worldwide?  We have never even tried to count the Dusky Dolphins – there are just too many around.

I believe that the enormous number of cetacean species present in high densities year-round, plus the fact that along the Peruvian desert coast we don’t know rain or storms, makes our coast one of the best potential whale and dolphin watching destinations to be developed in the world – plus there are sea lions, penguins and lots of other marine birds as additional guaranteed species on any given trip.

The question of why all of this has not been known before can be explained with a combination of answers:
Firstly, marine research in Peru traditionally focuses exclusively on anchovies, which make up nearly all of the fish catch.  Expensive biological research on cetaceans has never been carried out and our Non-governmental Organisation Mundo Azul is the only NGO in Peru with a small fleet of boats, capable of carrying out marine surveys. Secondly, it appears that Peruvians suffer a deep rooted fear of the ocean, and even though there are never storms, the sea is considered dangerous.  Plus the dark-green waters of the cold Humboldt Current harbor beautiful kelp forests but no coral reefs, so recreational divers only recently start discovering Peru.

As little has been published about the amazing diversity of more than 1,000 ocean fish species or more than 600 crustacean species, Peruvians consider the ocean boring. This lack of knowledge becomes obvious when in conversation with local people.  They are surprised that the animals known locally as ‘bufeos’ which can be seen passing by the beaches on a daily basis, are actually dolphins, in fact they would be better known to them as ‘Flipper’ from TV fame. Aquatic and marine sports have always been weekend activities for just a very small number of wealthy Peruvians, so that there is not a boating, yachting or sailing culture.  Tourism-wise the country concentrates on promoting archeological sites like Machu Pichu and the rainforest.

Additionally the rugged Peruvian desert coast has little in the way of harbor infrastructure either, and is in many parts still inaccessible.  When we navigate even near the capital Lima we are often the only boat out there for the entire day.  All this has led to the ocean being, for most people, for tourism and waters sports only: a blank spot on the map: uncharted; unknown; and ignored.

However whale and dolphin watching, as well as other marine ecotourism activities, hold the potential solution for threatened marine biodiversity.  By involving local communities in tourism activities, and giving value to cetaceans and other marine species, it will slowly make more sense to local fishermen to earn money with living animals instead of illegally killing them and running the risk of getting jailed for ecological crimes.  Training fishermen to become tourist guides therefore was the next logical step for Mundo Azul to take.  Additionally we are promoting Codes of Conduct with existing marine tourism operators to avoid tourism itself becoming another threat to whales and dolphins.  There is a lot of work to be done yet.  Come and support us by being a Mundo Azul conservation volunteer in Peru - and see for yourself why we believe that Peru is the best potential whale and dolphin watching destination on Earth.

About the author

Stefan Austermühle, along with Nina Pardo, Sergio Bambaren, Alfredo Ferreyros Gildemeister, Lucho Raffo and Olga Rey founded Mundo Azul in 1999 with the aim of protecting the marine and aquatic biodiversity of Peru.

In the first years Mundo Azul initiated pioneering diving expeditions in Lake Titicaca, Laguna de los Condores and Yanachaga Chemillen National Park, as well as biodiversity and ecological research along the coast - including undercover research  investigating the illegal killing of dolphins for human consumption. In 2003 and 2004 they received the “Cambie” award from the University of the South Pacific for their conservation efforts, and in 2006 Mundo Azul initiated Peru's first large-scale photo-identification research program on Bottlenose Dolphins and hopes to extend this research effort to other species in the future. The remit now is to broaden it’s former vision to encompass environmental problems throughout Peru.