Santa Catarina Nursery Whale Heritage Area

The region is home to Southern right whales, which migrate from their feeding grounds in the South Georgia Islands to the southern part of Santa Catarina every year and stay in these protected coves between May and November for their breeding season.

In Laguna, there is also a group of resident bottle-nosed dolphins that live their entire lifespans within the local area, to the point of having their own culture, social rules and unique vocalisations. These dolphins interact closely with the local fishermen, helping them by signalling the location of shoals and pushing the fish towards their nets. This unique, collaborative relationship has become a tourist attraction.

The main concerns for the conservation and welfare of whales and dolphins in the area are entanglement in fishing gear (especially gillnets), harassment from motorised vehicles such as helicopters and jet skis, noise pollution, collisions with boats, water contamination and chemical pollution runoff from rivers, and the transformation of the coastal landscape. In particular, the increasing development of buildings on the coast around the nursery coves is changing the topography and increasing artificial light and noise pollution, which risks disorientating the whales on their migratory routes.

• The resident bottlenose dolphins do not mix with other dolphins from the open sea that may pass through the area. According to records, they are the largest bottlenose dolphins in the Americas.
• Laguna, known as the National Capital of the Fishing Dolphins, is the only place in Brazil where bottlenose dolphins interact and seem to fish collaboratively with fishermen, with Africa being the only other destination in the world where this behaviour has been reported.
• Right whales seek refuge to breed in small coves because they are shallow, with lateral protections where females can give birth and calves can be nursed. Because of these characteristics, natural predators do not enter the coves.
• The last right whale to be hunted in Santa Catarina was killed in 1973, while the law banning hunting was passed later, in 1989.
• Right whales stay less than 30 metres from the beach, very close and in places so shallow and protected that they can touch their bellies to the seabed. Research carried out by Dr Patricia Eichler Barker (biologist and oceanographer) proves this very interesting fact.