Whale Season in Costa Rica in Costa Rica is on! Whales are probably some of the favorite sights! And they just started arriving in the waters of the southern area of the Costa Rican Pacific Coast
In the following months, we can expect to have a lot of special activities such as festivals, whale watching tours, and other local activities on the southern Pacific coast during August and September.
From the famous Ballena Marino National Park in Dominical Area to the mighty Drake Bay in Corcovado National Park, whales can be seen and enjoyed on unforgettable tours.
You may also like to read: About whales and dolphins, an amazing thing to witness; with responsibility!
The most expected of all these fantastic animals are the humpback whales with their astonishing acrobatic jumps and fin slapping.
According to the Marine Mammal Center based in California, there seem to be three distinct populations of humpback whales that do not interact with one another, “one in the North Pacific, one in the North Atlantic, and another in the Southern Hemisphere (south of the equator).”
The North Pacific group, estimated at around 15,000 whales, feed in the summer along the coast from California to Alaska and migrate in the winter (January-April) to breeding grounds off of Hawaii, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Japan, according to the Marine Center.
The Southern Hemisphere humpbacks are the ones that can be seen in southern Costa Rica starting in late July and until about October when they come up from cold southern waters to feed and birth their calves.
“Humpbacks are among the most endangered whales and fewer than 10 percent of their original population remains.
The current word population is estimated between 35-40,000,” said the Marine Mammal Center, a non-profit marine rescue, and research center, on their website.
The Costa Rican Tourism Institute reports that over 100,000 tourists visited the country for whale watching in 2014.
Source: The Costa Rica Star