| FAWQ - Frequent asked whale questioons! |
|
As a guide with Open Air Expeditions, one of my
responsibilities is to inform the tourist as much
as possible about the whales. Sometime I just cannot
stop talking about these wonderful creatures and
their behaviors.
In every tour I explain the different kind of behaviors
we see once we arrive with the whales. After all,
everybody likes it to be informed about what they
see. So in every tour I make sure that the people
will leave with a feeling that they actually learned
something about the whales. And of course, everybody gets the opportunity to
ask as many questions as they want. And what a question
I get sometimes!!
I like to give the answers to the most frequent
questions I get.
How many calves do the female gets at
the time?
Just one, and the calves are huge! Calves can be
up to 4 meter (12 ft) and weigh 1500 kilos.
How does the calve nurse?
The milk of the whales is
very fat. Furthermore, the milk is not really fluid
like the milk of us human beings. The milk of the
mother whale is more like a wax, so the newborn
get really close to the mother to "catch" the milk.
They eat 75 gallons a day.
Do whales have ears?
Sure they do! And very sensitive ones. They can
hear under the water where sounds come from, something
that we as human beings cannot. The ears are just
behind their eyes and are very small.
What do the humpbacks eat?
They eat "Krill". Krill
is plankton which you can compare to a small shrimp.
They only eat during the summer months, so once
they leave the feeding area to migrate to the Mexican
waters, they stop eating for at least a couple
of months.
Why are they called humpback whales?
When they dive deep, their
body makes a hump just before they dive. Their
scientific name however is Megaptera novaeangliae,
which means ¨Great wings
from New England". The humpback whales have the longest
flippers (Great wings) of all the whales and have
been seen for the first time in New England.
Why do they migrate?
The humpbacks are forced to migrate because right
here in the Mexican waters there is no food for the
whales. In the Northern waters where they stay in
the summer, the water gets too cold to survive in
the winter. If they would get a baby there, it would
freeze to dead.
Don't we harass the whales on a boat?
Good question! Whale watching is becoming one of
the main tourist attractions in Puerto Vallarta.
And there are many rules for whale watchers. Everybody
who goes out whale watching needs to have a permit.
A small red flag with a number. Permit holders finance
a lot of research of the humpback whales. So if you
go out with the permit holders, you help us to do
our research. Permit holders know that they are allowed
to stay with the whales for a certain time only.
Even as the maximum number of boats, the advised
distance, and to give an answer to your question,
how to approach the whale. And when we see that the
whales do not appreciate our company, we will leave
them and find some others. We can see it well by
their behavior. However, there are a lot of companies
going out without a permit. And they often do not
know what they are doing; such as going frontally
to the whale or staying hours and hours with the
same whales. So yes, they do harass the whales unfortunately.
Maybe one day I will have children, and hopefully
they will have children as well. I would really like
to show my grandchildren some whales some time. And
I can only do this when the tourists do not go out
with the illegals, since they do not care about the
whales, only about the money they make.
Next time, more whale info!
Astrid van Dam - Open Air Expeditions
astrid@pvmirror.com
Note: The only boats
who do own the permits are: Prince of Whales & Nautica
(Open Air Expeditions), Bloodhound, Eco Tours de
Mexico, Vallarta Adventures, Aleta, Searcher II
, Searcher I, Aqua Guy, Mayan Dream, Tangaroa,
La Gaviota 2ª, Vallarta Sol, Luna de Miel,
Catalina III & Adelita.
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