Want to Swim with Humpbacks? Make sure to do it ethically!
When it comes to marine conservation, my biggest passion are cetaceans (a fancy name for all whales, dolphins and porpoises). I openly admit that I am the whale nerd on the Seabirds team! It goes without saying that I was VERY excited about our expedition to the Silver Bank this past February. I had high expectations and let me start by saying that they were met, without a doubt.
What matters most to me when it comes to whale watching tours, swim with whale encounters and other experiences involving marine mammals is that the animals always come first. Many places around the world offer encounters with wildlife and more often than not, the focus is on giving paying customers an experience of a lifetime, something to brag about on social media, without any regard for the animals. It is unfortunate, but we often have to protect animals, nature and the planet from ourselves.
As I went down a rabbit hole of determining if “ethical” tourism experiences, including in-water encounters with marine mammals, do indeed exist, I learned more and more about the different laws, regulations or lack thereof in many countries around the world.
Carol, one of our team members, had been to the Silver Bank before and spoke very highly of it, so of course I had to look into it and do some research. To my surprise, I learned that the Dominican Republic had created a protected area for marine mammals called The Sanctuary for the Marine Mammals of the Dominican Republic and in 1986 designated the Silver Bank the world’s first sanctuary for marine mammals, all the while having special laws permitting in-water encounters with humpback whales! I was thrilled — and nervous. Everything looked good on paper, but would it hold true in real-life?
Based on Carol’s recommendation, we chose Conscious Breath Adventures, one of three operators permitted to run tours on the Silver Bank. I was excited and nervous to go on this trip and did not know what to expect, but my mind was put at ease as soon as we did our first briefing with the group!
This image was taken with a telephoto lens and has been copped.
From the beginning it was made very clear to us that the whales always come first. The Dominican Republic’s Ministry of the Environment & Natural Resources has a clear set of guidelines for swim-with-whale and whale watching activities that we were walked through. We learned scuba diving and free diving with humpback whales is strictly prohibited at any given time and only snorkeling at the surface is allowed. Prior to our first day on the water, the Conscious Breath team had the entire group do a “test run” for a soft in-water encounter. We were shown how to enter the water quietly without disturbing the whales and practice swimming with our fins without splashing. The more I listened to Gene and Cat (our guides), the more my mind was put at ease that this would be the trip I had been searching for.
Once on the Silver Bank, I was also reminded that tourist activities are heavily regulated in this area. There are only three licensed operators that are permitted to run these types of tours. Their vessels are anchored at designated moorage sites, keeping the impact on the reef minimal. Each vessel can accommodate up to 20 passengers which makes for 60 tourists at any given week over the course of a 10-week season. This equates to about 600 visitors every year. The Silver Bank encompasses an area of about 900 square miles with the operation of all vessels taking place in about a 5 square mile radius (at most). This leaves a lot of space for the humpback whales to breed, mate and nurse their calves without any impact from tourists.
The priority during every outing was to observe the animals and their behavior from a distance before slowly approaching. Our guides would always enter the water first to try and locate the whales and observe their behavior before giving us the go-ahead. We lined up, floating motionless and observed the whales — an otherworldly experience! Some whales were more curious than others and even approached our groups (a story for another time). It was a truly life changing experience that allowed us a tiny glimpse into the life of these incredibly intelligent, graceful and gentle mammals.
In the next update, we’ll share more about our whale encounters, our interest in humpback whales as research subjects and our new project Blue Echo — which aims to create an open-source, context-rich database that combines underwater acoustics with other data!
Viktoria Muehlbauer is an ocean aficionado and whale nerd with a passion for sustainable and ethical travel. Originally from Germany, she moved to Canada in 2016 and currently calls Northern British Columbia her home. Viktoria is particularly interested in the relationship between cetaceans and humans.
