J. CETACEAN RES. MANAGE. SC/61/WW10 1

• Main Authors: Península Valdés, Mariano Sironi, Natalia Leske, Ra Rivera, Diego Taboada, Roxana Schteinbarg
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: WHALE; SUSTAINABILITY; WHALE WATCHING; Argentina; Chubut; Southern Right Whale
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.508.4233; http://www.iwcoffice.co.uk/_documents/sci_com/SC61docs/SC-61-WW10.pdf

Whalewatching began informally at Península Valdés, Argentina in 1971. The activity was first regulated by Provincial Law 2381 in 1984. Since then, the number of tourists going on whale-watch tours to see southern right whales on this nursery ground increased dramatically, from 17,446 in 1991 to 113,148 in 2007 (548%). With this increase, changes in many aspects of the activity required that the regulations be updated and adapted to the new conditions. In a previous paper (Sironi et al. 2005) we described aspects of the local whalewatch regulations that by the 2000s had become inapplicable and that were analyzed during a workshop held in 2004. Here, we report the progress made in Chubut Province to improve whalewatch regulations from 2004 to the present. We provide a timeline of the history of whalewatching and associated events at Península Valdés for the period 1971-2009, including changes in commercial activity, permits granted to whalewatch companies, regulations, and the main points of the new Law 5714 for the conservation of the southern right whale enacted in 2008 that regulates the activity. We also provide statistics for whalewatching at Península Valdés updated to 2008.