An Amazing Whale Season Ends with many Whales and many Challenges. Below, we share a brief summary with the most relevant information.
THREE More Whales Rescued
After two seasons with a very high success rate, this time the ocean 🌊 reminded us that experience and effort are not always enough. We responded to hundreds of calls, spent over 30 days at sea, deployed 44 boats, and lost more than $100,000 pesos in gear. We made our best effort, but confronted many challenges.
Despite everything, we managed to release three whales 🐋
Today we celebrate 103 successful rescues in our history.
No Research, No Conservation
For the sixth consecutive year, we carried out the study of abundance, distribution, and seasonality of humpback whales in Banderas Bay.
We began sampling in November and finished in May.
We’ve done over 130 outings and spent around 800 hours at sea!
This season, due to the influence of the “La Niña” climate phenomenon (cooler sea surface temperatures), there were many more whales than usual. The average of whales recorded in previous seasons was 4.15 whales per hour, and this year we recorded 6.15 whales per hour—there were whales everywhere!
This year we saw several of our favorite whales again, like Corcholata, Titan, and La Mexicana.
- Corcholata (5BB041) is a very prolific female, first sighted in Banderas Bay 24 years ago with a calf. This year, she had another calf. She is an experienced female who was unfazed when three males fought around her. She feeds along the U.S.-Canada border.
- Titan (5BB441) is a male survivor of a vessel collision. We’ve known him since 2008, and he already had that deep scar behind his dorsal fin. As always, we found him fighting in several courting or competitive groups.
- La Mexicana, or more accurately El Mexicano (5BB042), returned once again to the Bay and reminded us that time passes relentlessly—he looks exactly the same as the first time we saw him in 1996. Due to a unique tail marking that resembles a snake, we initially nicknamed him La Mexicana. Years later, we heard him sing and now we know he is a magnificent male over 30 years old.
ALERT!
Whales Are Closer Than You Think
Since 2021, we’ve been working on the “Less Speed = More Lives” campaign in Banderas Bay and Los Cabos. We’ve given talks, displayed informational banners and posters at boarding points, produced social media videos about how to prevent these terrible accidents, printed brochures and stickers, and done media outreach.
We took our message to the streets of Puerto Vallarta and Los Cabos through ads on the rear windows of city buses, aiming to reach more people.
Despite all these efforts, 4 whales were struck in Banderas Bay and 2 in Los Cabos.
We’re sharing the video of Lucky, a one-year-old whale, that was hit in Banderas Bay; we hope it will recover and survive.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!
We are very grateful to our amazing group of volunteers who helped us cover a large number of environmental education and outreach events this season.
A VERY SPECIAL THANK YOU TO ALL OUR SPONSORS AND DONORS
Without your support, we wouldn’t be able to continue all our conservation and whale protection projects.
