Great Whale Conservancy

04/22/2026

Whales have been adapting to change on earth ever since one day, about 55 million years ago, in the ancient Tethys Sea, when a dog-sized, hoofed, four-legged animal began to discover that life in the watery world was a better bet for survival than the struggles it faced on land. One good day at a ti...

04/09/2026

THE BELLO WHALE THROUGH THE YEARS

This adult blue whale is named after our good friend and ocean hero Max Bello.

Max has worked tirelessly to protect our critical but fragile oceans. He has achieved spectacular success in the creation of Marine Protected Areas.

The Bello whale and countless other whales live in healthier oceans because of Max.

FIRST IMAGE: The Bello whale in 2012 and 2023
SECOND IMAGE: The Bello whale in 2018
THIRD IMAGE: The Bello whale in 2026

03/06/2026

03/06/2026

03/06/2026

Every time we see a Dwarf S***m Whale, it's important not yo blink... or you might miss it!

02/26/2026

The Sea of Cortez is living up to one of its other names this month, the Vermillion Sea, when a well-fed blue whale, latin name balaenoptera musculus, or, in abbreviation, BM, does a BM.
This rich marine manure feeds plankton and helps stimulate the production of more life in the sea, much the way human farmers spread compost on their gardens to increase fertility and food production: modern humans learning to mimic systems that have occurred naturally on earth for millions of years.

02/26/2026

Join us in the slow pace of the blue whale, our planet's largest animal, as she comes up to the surface for several breaths, to load her blood cells with oxygen at a rate up to 9 times more efficient than humans. She passed close by us on this sequence, and then down she went, returning for her next giant mouthful of krill.

02/25/2026

Our week 2 guests hailed from North Carolina and California.
All of them are our friends who have for years wanted to come down and
share a week with us in our second home here in Baja California.
The good news is that the weather cooperated, with light winds most of
the week, and even better was the high abundance of whales.

In particular this season is shaping up to be a banner year for blue whales.
Our guests had their fill of seeing the gentle giants in sufficient quantities
each of their 5 days on the sea.

We have only been here 2 weeks but the number of blue whales we have identified
already surpasses what we typically see in an average year where we spent a month
and a half here.

The food is plentiful, and whales surface feeding has been observed everyday.
Diversity has been low however, all whales have been blue and humpback with the
lone exception being a mother and calf fin whale pair.
Dolphin numbers have been lower than normal, and pelagic bird life seems to be close
to average. The desert is greener than usual due to some winter rains.
And we even had thunder, lightning (we drove the boat away from it) and rain on the sea late one day.




Below, two different blue whales displaying white areas on their flukes, a somewhat unusual trait for blues in this area.

06/16/2025

"Falling in love with the future, but who pays for the dinner?" & 🐋 "Whales are our ecosystem engineers"

These are the two quotes I will remember from today's BNP Paribas 4th Shipping Event. Lots of interesting and inspiring speeches, brought in a refreshing "blind date" approach! Very hashtag Christa Sys 😉

Catrien Scheers & Thierry Vanelslander, if it were a competition, you would get the first price for giving it all (as always) hashtag and hashtag 🏆

Another special thanks for giving us the opportunity to highlight the work of the Whale Guardians™ and Céline MORTIER and Basile Aloy for delivering the message from your perspective. Repetition is key. Cheers to small victories and new encounters Yapa Mahinda Bandara.

Thanks to our tireless volunteer Helene Smidt for this lively post.

06/16/2025

For me, one of the most exciting parts of the Blue Economic Finance Forum, BEFF, this weekend was the Pitch Session on Saturday. Incredibly innovative green, or blue, businesses, including matter.industries, a drop-in filter for textile refuse water purification processes,
Coralvita: bringing coral reefs back via transplanting systems similar to horticulture practices,
ECOncrete: creating nature inclusive concrete forms that coral can grow on, Coast4c seaweed: which rebuilds the seaweed supply chain, helping strengthen artisanal seaweed producers production processes and outcomes, Protix: the feed company based completely on production of the black soldier fly larvae,
Cymbrosia: a seaweed feed amendment for livestock, which reduces methane gas production on cattle and sheep by 80%, while increasing yield by 8%,
and,
Equatic: an ocean-based CO2 removal facility that removes oceanic CO2 while also producing green hydrogen(at the rate of per 1 ton CO@ removed, 30 kilos of green hydrogen produced).
These innovative founders presented with one of their investors, who each briefly shared the story of investing in the company and the process by which they created their successful, profitable ventures, all of which are truly giving back far more than profits.
These are all stories of hope and the positive return that we can give back to the earth, the ultimate investor in humanity.