The potential of whale watching in the Caribbean : 1999+ : a new report from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society

Abstract

In the Greater Caribbean — comprising some 23 island nations and overseas territories of France, Britain, and the Netherlands — whale watching is still a fairly new idea. Begun in southern California in 1955, commercial whale watching did not spread to the Caribbean until the early to mid-1980s with the development of dolphin watching and swimming tours in the Bahamas and humpback whale watching off the Dominican Republic. In 1988, commercial whale watching started up in the eastern Caribbean with tours to see sperm whales and various dolphins off Dominica. Whale watching in the above three countries has grown steadily and spread to other nations and nearby islands and, by the mid-1990s, whale watching was attracting visitors in the Turks & Caicos Islands, the US and British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Martinique, Grenada, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Recently, whale watch tours have also started up in St. Lucia, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Barthélemy, and Guadeloupe. Whale watching in the Caribbean occurs by land, air and sea and on a wide variety of craft; some of the whale watching is actually based more on dolphins — 'whale watching' is used to mean watching any of the 81 species of cetaceans. However, despite the great diversity of platforms and species watched, and the continual expansion to new islands, whale watching in the Caribbean, in general, has grown more slowly than expected and has had some growing pains, particularly in the past 5 years.