Whale Hunting Season In The Philippines
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Photo: Jotay Resort
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Humpback Whale off Santa Ana CagayanHunting the best whale photographs from around the Philippines is a project of GetWet-Asia. Get involved, get on the water, get those photographs now. The annual whale hunting season in the Philippines starts in a few days. Bring your cameras to the Philippines from January through April 2014, passionately pixelate whales and email the images to philippines@getwet-aisa.com.
What whales can be hunted in the Philippines? For their meat or other body parts destined for misguided Chinese herbalists (see footnote): absolutely none. In the Philippines, in the 21st century, we hunt whales with our cameras.
Humpback whale watching – find humpback whales at this time of year off the northern tip of Luzon Island. The best staging post for humpback whale watching is Santa Ana, Cagayan. It is easy to get to Santa Ana, by flying to Tuguegarao of taking an air-conditioned bus from Metro Manila. In Santa Ana, you will find a bunch of friendly, accommodating resorts and inns in which to stay and any traveler’s budget can be met here.
The humpback whales travel past the northern shores of the Philippines, through the Babuyan Channel, every year at this time, on their way from the Pacific Ocean into the West Philippine Sea and beyond, into the South China Sea and eventually into the Indian Ocean. In addition to humpback whales you can expect to see pods of spinner dolphins and bottlenose dolphins while whale watching off Santa Ana Cagayan.
Whale shark watching – of course the whale shark is not a whale but is in fact the largest fish currently in the oceans of the world. The whale shark received the “whale” prefix to its name because when first observed it was noted to be similar in habit to a whale, insomuch as it is a filter feeder and cruises near the surface of the sea, filtering large qualities of plankton and other small, protein-rich organisms from huge volumes of water.
Whale shark watching is most famous in the waters off Donsol, Sorsogon, where, during the period of late December to early April, more than 40 whale sharks regularly arrive to feed and socialize.
Donsol is about an hour by car South from Legaspi City; you can fly daily to Legaspi City from Manila. In Donsol you can rent a whale watching boat, from any number of registered boat hire establishments along the black sand beach, and then head out over the cobalt blue of the Sibuyan Sea, towards Ticao Island. Once a whale shark is spotted the boat-captain will aim to position the whale watching boat sufficiently ahead of the whale shark to give you time to enter the water with snorkeling gear and camera, to capture your prize winning image of the fish.
Scuba diving with whale sharks is forbidden around Donsol as it has been observed that scuba divers in the very near vicinity can cause the whale sharks considerable distress. Whale watching off Donsol provides the primary tourism income for the community and they are enthusiastic to keep the whale sharks returning every year.
Other places where the opportunity of watching whale sharks frequent is off Cebu, near Oslob and Moalboal. Whale sharks and other whale species are also frequently found at this time of year in the vicinity of Dumaguete, off Bais and off Apo Island. And also off Pamilacan Island, South of Panglao, Bohol.
Blue whale watching – although extremely rare, blue whales have been observed in Philippine waters between Dumaguete and Panglao Island, Bohol. If you are going to see blue whales in the Philippines then this is the time of year and place most likely.
Other places for whale watching – there are many other places where whales and whale sharks have been observed around the Philippines but none quite to regular or predictable as the places listed above. We have observed whales and whale sharks in the Verde Island Passage (between Mindoro and Luzon), others have seen whale sharks around Samal Island, in the Davao Gulf, and in Sarangani Bay.
Whale species recorded in the Philippines include: humpback whale, sperm whale, pygmy sperm whale, dwarf sperm whale, blue whale, pilot whales, false killer whales, pygmy killer whale, minke whale, sei whale, Bryde’s whale, Omura’s whale, fin whale, beaked whales and the melon-headed whale.
A bit of history – before 1998 it was common for whale sharks (and other shark species) to be hunted around the Philippines to supply Chinese restaurants and the Chinese medicine industry; in 1998 the Philippines finally banned all fishing, selling, importing and exporting of whale sharks for commercial purposes.
Find Philippine Sports
Find Whale Watching Panglao / Pamilacan, Bohol
Footnote: Chinese medicine, like all millennia old religions, relies on the placebo effect; 98% of Chinese medicine’s “cures” are placebo, the 2% of ingredients that actually have any direct physiological effect are ginseng, ginger and garlic . . . everything else is specifically included to extort the highest prices charged.