Whale Watching Education Or Exploitation
The popularity of watching whales from boats has exploded around the world in the last fifteen years. Thousands and thousands of people are vacationing and traveling great distances with the hope of seeing whales in the wild. Blame this whale fascination on "Free Willy" or better yet blame it on our curious human nature, but whales and people have been interacting a lot more lately. Is this interaction good? Do both species gain from these encounters? Are we harming the whales? Is this education or exploitation?
Before the movie "Free Willy" was released there was one whale watching boat in the San Juan Islands. A couple of years after the movie I counted over fifty boats on a busy summer afternoon all watching whales. It was sad to see so many boats ( all different shapes and sizes) following these fantastic creatures. Well...a lot has changed since then, and I think these changes are for the best. Today there are a lot less whale watching boats in the San Juan Islands. The Pacific Northwest Whale Watch Operators Association was established and it established guidelines for whale watching that have now been adopted by the state of Washington.
Now is probably a good time to let you know a bit about myself and why I wanted to write this article. First, I am no scientist (although I have spoken many times with Ken Balcomb, a scientist who has studied the Orca Whales in the Pacific Northwest for over forty years). I have no PHD in higher education, no government grants, etc. I am simply a person who has lived and boated around the Orca Whales for the last twenty-fives years in the San Juan Island Archipelago of Washington State.
I am a member of the Pacific Northwest Whale Watch Operators and I have been for the last four years. I operate a small boat whale watching tour out of Friday harbor. My thoughts after four years and countless whale encounters is this, they are not bothered by boats. They certainly do not flee from boats that are watching them on the contrary they often seem to go out of their way to get close to boats. Often they breach ( jump out of the water ) right next to a boat which causes everybody on board to scream with delight. I am convinced that at times these intelligent animals enjoy interacting with people aboard whale watching boats. I often think about trained Orca whales at marine parks around the world, well guess what, if they didn't enjoy putting on a show for people you sure couldn't make them do what they do for our enjoyment
This new relationship between whales and people is probably the best hope there is to stop whaling around the world. As more and more people witness these beautiful, highly intelligent, family orientated mammals, pressure will grow to stop the slaughter of these creatures. The more we whale watch operators can expose the public to the grace and beauty of these animals the more public outcry there will be against harming them. It is illegal to capture whales in the state of Washington, but once not to long ago they were captured, and sold to marine parks( some died while trying to be capture) around the world. It was public outraged that changed the law. If it happened in Washington it can happen around the world.
So is this new interest in whale watching education or exploitation? I don't like either of those words, really. I prefer to think of this whale/human relationship more as a "marriage". The more we learn about whales the more we will care about them, and the more we care about them the more we will strive to protect them. This is my hope, that this "marriage will benefit not just the whales, but it will change how we think about all living creatures on our planet ( a planet we all share).
To learn more about whale watching in the Pacific Northwest come visit the author at his web page: whale watching