PUERTO ÁNGEL, Pochutla, Oaxaca.- The first sighting of killer whales (Orcinus orca) within the whale watching season in the Coast of Oaxaca was recorded last Tuesday afternoon by tourists and tour operators, one kilometer out to sea in front of Puerto Angel, Pochutla.
In a surprising finding that was witnessed by the crew of at least four boats that were making tourist trips in coastal waters that correspond to Puerto Ángel and Zipolite, a group of eight orcas transited the area as part of the whale migration season, in the one that hundreds of specimens move from the cold waters of the Arctic through the Oaxaca Coast, where they arrive mainly to mate and give birth to their young.
Whale watching, valuable tourist product
In the context of the coronavirus pandemic and just when an encouraging winter holiday season is developing, nautical service providers offer tours for the observation of marine species, taking advantage of the whale watching season, which in the case of Subzone “A ”On the Oaxacan coast, it comprises the coastal strip that runs from Puerto Ángel to Mazunte, which represents an attractive tourist product that oxygenates the local economy.
For Francisco Villegas Zurita, partner of the Yubarta Ecotourism company and scholar of marine mammals, promoting green and conservation tourism represents a double opportunity for service providers to have an extra income and at the same time record and share data on various species sighted in the sea, so that scientists can systematize the data and learn more about the species that migrate or are endemic in the area.
They promote green and ecological tourism
“We are trying to promote green and ecological tourism, that is why we develop several strategies in our tours to observe marine fauna, especially we work with marine mammals, birds, turtles, at the same time we work with the generation of data that leads us to carry out better conservation of resources in the Oaxaca Coast such as turtles, humpback whales and orcas ”, he explained.
We try to influence locally with the local tour operators so that they copy us and promote this type of wildlife observation and generate extra income to local communities such as Zipolite, Mazunte and San Agustinillo.
The academic also pointed out that the activity of species monitoring, which he has led together with a group of specialists for a decade and is complemented with observation for tourism purposes by tour operators, faces challenges such as increasing the number of records of marine species .
In a special way, he said, with marine mammals, using tools such as geographic location, direction of migrations, photos, group size, and increasing the number of data to have quality information that is added to the database with the that scientists already have.
Coast, with great diversity of species
The Oaxacan coast has a diversity of marine fauna such as birds, turtles and marine mammals, which is used by nautical service providers to offer wildlife observation tours, bird watching, snorkeling and wildlife observation, as well as a scientific tour , which covers 180 square kilometers of the whale watching perimeter of Puerto Ángel, Mazunte and San Agustinillo.
