‘Swimming with orcas is out of control’: can new rules keep tourists and Mexico’s whales safe? | Whales

JAfter sunrise in the small villa village in Baja California Sur, the beach rises with tourists who wear clothes. They climb to Mexican fishing boats and race to Blue Windy Bay, and the cameras are ready. The fishermen turned into tourist guides follow two yachts in the oceans, which follow the directives of the pilots who were sent in aircraft. The goal of these knights is 40 boats? To enable swimming with Orcas in the wild.

Swimming with Orcas is located in Mexico in a legal gray area while exploiting Gaps in Mexican laws That protects the endangered marine wildlife. This has become a special problem in the past five years since selfie with whales on social media has increased the number of people who want to experience activity.

“We thought it was a great thing in the beginning, but it became a kind of nightmare,” says Evans Boden, the owner of the Cabo Ashrash experience, who is estimated to have taken 1500 people to swim with Orkas over the past nine years. “It is completely out of control. Due to the lack of powers or bases, anyone can do what they want.”

Local fishing boats, some of them without insurance or appropriate licenses, are competing with the major companies owned by foreigners in the nearby cities of Kabo San Lucas or not Baz. Some of these companies guarantee tourists an opportunity to swim with Orcas and withdraw all stations to keep this promise.

Those who are reserved by tourists, and the result is the same: increasing the number of people who swim or liberate them with whales, which means that dozens of boats grow around animals. This is a special problem in May and June, and the most crowded for OCA swimming trips.

Georgina Saad, a marine biologist at the University of Baja California, is concerned about where all this might lead to. Although he did not kill any of the wild Orca or attacking a person, she says: She says: “They are wild animals. If we do not give them distance and space, they may defend themselves like any animal.”

The continuous flow of boats and swimmers may also affect the welfare of Orcas. The pods in Paja are usually female with children and often feed on mobola rays, sharks, dolphins, turtles, or whales while people are with them. They are looking to use the sonar to find their prey, and The noise of the engines can disrupt the whales The ability to capture food.

“In the end, these animals may not want to return,” says Juan Vaskuiz, the owner of a tourist company in La Paz, based in Labaz and commander of more than 20 years. “They have good memories and they will remember the harassment.”

No one organizes the sudden swimming increase with Orcas, which started in 2019 after a few Instagram publications Viral gold. “It brings a lot of money to societies and no one wants to stop.”

Now, however, the proposed plan aims to change all of this.

A group of experts, including Saad, Higuera, and Baudin, made recommendations for the type of type management in La Ventana Bay, where most swimming occurs. To do this, they merged information from 44 people who were locally interviewed. Saad expects the approval of the plan by the Mexican government this summer.

The proposed plan for Orcas will be the first species management plan in Mexico Partially based on animal behavior – if they show distress, they should be left alone – and not only a share of the number of people or boats in an area.

Tourists flocked to Baja for decades to swim with whale sharks and watch gray and ruler whales. The difference is that these activities are strictly subject to the government with permits issued by the government and the company’s guidelines-but swimming activity with Orcas has slipped over the regulatory network. This is partly due to the fact that the current laws are not prohibited specifically swimming with serrated whales and partly because they depend on the presence of plans to manage species.

The proposed plan for ORCAS also requires permits for any tourist boats that interact with animals, and will limit the number of boats that can surround a individual or family of no more than three at one time, with a cover of nine boats on any day. Since every Orca has a unique backplace, the tribes or evidence should be able to track their interactions.

Saad says that the revenues from the permits fees will go towards training people from La Ventana and the financing of patrol boats to impose the plan. “The goal is to teach the captains and guides how to read the behavior of whales so that they know when to interact with animals, how to do this safely, and when they give OCS space.”

Not everyone is confident that this ORCA management plan will succeed and others feel as if it has been left outside the planning process. “The arbitrary decisions with unilateral sides can affect the future of many families,” says Christopal Perez, owner of a tourist company based in La Paz. “Society needs a voice.”

Jorge Armando Luciro Gonzalez, a boat leader who lives in the nearby Agoa Amarga, says no one asked his opinion about the plan, nor any of his cousins ​​or brothers who hope to obtain a living from wildlife tourism. Many local captains are concerned that swimming permits with Orcas will mainly go to tourism companies in CABO San Lucas and La Paz. They also believe that it is not just that the proposed plan targets La Ventana only when OCAs – and tourists who want to see them – all over the Paga Peninsula.

Saad believes that ensuring that tourists are allowed to swim with Orcas only in La Ventana is the most important part of the management plan. “We can send a message that this is the only place to do this, and this is what will be done, and the rest is illegal.”

Regardless of when and how the management plan is revealed, most captains say they will continue to take tourists on swimming trips with Orcas, and have done their best to maintain the safety of people and animals.

“I love these animals more than anything else. I want to be able to protect them, and I still want to be able to provide people who respect the opportunity to see them,” says Boden. “Do this in the right way is the most important thing.”