Just after sunrise in the small village of La Ventana in Baja California Sur, the beach is bustling with wetsuit-clad tourists. They climb into Mexican fishing boats and race out into the windy blue bay, cameras at the ready. The fishers turned tour guides follow a couple of ocean safari yachts, which follow directions from pilots sent up in spotter planes. The goal of this 40-boat cavalcade? To enable swimming with orcas in the wild.
Swimming with orcas in Mexico falls into a legal grey area as it exploits loopholes in two Mexican laws that protect endangered marine wildlife. This has become particularly problematic in the past five years since selfies with the whales on social media have led to an increase in the number of people wanting to try the activity.
“We thought it was a great thing at the beginning but it has become kind of a nightmare,” says Evans Baudin, the owner of Cabo Shark Experience who estimates he has taken 1,500 people to swim with orcas over the past nine years. “It’s completely out of control. Since there are no authorities or rules, anyone can do whatever they want.”
Local fishing boats, some without insurance or the proper licences, are competing with the bigger foreign-owned companies based in the nearby cities of Cabo San Lucas or La Paz. Some of these companies are guaranteeing tourists the chance to swim with orcas and are pulling out all the stops to keep that promise.
Whoever tourists book with, the result is the same: increasing numbers of people are swimming or freediving with the whales, meaning dozens of boats are zooming around the animals. This is especially problematic in May and June, the busiest months for orca swimming trips.
Georgina Saad, a marine biologist with the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur, is worried about where all this may lead. Although no wild orca has ever killed or attacked a human, she says: “They are wild animals. If we don’t give them distance and space, they may, like any animal, defend themselves.”
The constant influx of boats and swimmers may also affect the orcas’ wellbeing. The pods in Baja are usually females with babies and are often feeding on mobula rays, sharks, dolphins, turtles or whales while people are in the water with them. They hunt using sonar to find their prey, and the noise from the motors can disrupt the whales’ ability to capture food.
“Eventually, these animals may not want to come back,” says Juan Vasquez, owner of a La Paz-based sailing tour company and a captain for more than 20 years. “They have good memories and they will remember being harassed.”
Erick Higuera, a marine biologist and documentary film-maker based in La Paz, says that no one is regulating the sudden increase in swimming with orcas, which took off in 2019 after a few Instagram posts went viral. “It brings in a lot of money for communities and no one wants to stop.”
Now, however, a proposed plan aims to change all that.
A group of experts, including Saad, Higuera and Baudin, have put forward recommendations for a species management plan for orcas in La Ventana Bay, where most of the swimming happens. To do that, they incorporated information from 44 people interviewed locally. Saad expects the plan to be approved by the Mexican government this summer.
The proposed plan for orcas would be the first species management plan in Mexico based partly on the animals’ behaviour – if they exhibit distress they must be left alone – not just a quota on the number of people or boats in an area.
Tourists have flocked to Baja for decades to swim with whale sharks and to watch grey and humpback whales. The difference is that these activities are strictly regulated with government-issued permits and firm guidelines – but the activity of swimming with orcas has slipped through the regulatory net. This is partly because existing laws do not specifically ban swimming with toothed whales and partly because they rely on having species management plans.
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The scientists’ proposed plan for orcas would also require permits for any tourism boats interacting with the animals, and would limit the number of boats that can surround an individual or family to no more than three at a time, with a cap of nine boats on any given day. Since each orca has a unique dorsal fin, captains or guides should be able to keep track of their interactions.
Revenue from the permit fees would go towards training people from La Ventana and funding patrol boats to enforce the plan, Saad says. “The goal is to teach captains and guides how to read the whales’ behaviour so they know when to interact with the animals, how to do so safely, and when to give the orcas space.”
Not everyone is confident that this orca management plan will succeed and some feel as if they were left out of the planning process. “Arbitrary, one-sided decisions could affect the future of so many families,” says Cristóbal Pérez, the owner of a tour company based in La Paz. “The community needs a voice.”
Jorge Armando Lucero González, a tour boat captain who lives in nearby Agua Amarga, says that no one asked his opinion about the plan, nor any of his cousins or brothers who hope to continue to earn a living from wildlife tourism. Many local captains are worried that permits for swimming with orcas will mainly go to established tour companies in Cabo San Lucas and La Paz. They also believe it is unfair that the proposed plan only targets La Ventana when orcas – and the tourists who want to see them – roam throughout the Baja peninsula.
Saad believes that ensuring tourists are allowed to swim with orcas only in La Ventana is the most important part of the management plan. “We can send the message that this is the only place to do it, and this is how it is going to be done, and the rest is illegal.”
Regardless of when and how the management plan unfolds, most captains say they will keep taking tourists on trips to swim with orcas, and do their best to keep the people and animals safe.
“I love these animals more than anything. I want to be able to protect them, and I still want to be able to offer people who are respectful the opportunity to see them,” Baudin says. “Doing it the right way is the most important thing.”
