To flourish, Sri Lanka’s whale watching industry must operate responsibly

In the early 1990s, whale watching opportunities in Sri Lanka were few and far between as both opportunity and access were rare.

Whale watching requires both whales and whale watchers, such as tourists, naturalists and so on, to be within viewing distance of one another. Capturing whales and holding them in marine parks is one way of doing it, but this raises serious ethical concerns and also deprives participants of the unmatched experience of seeing animals in the wild. So it is the watchers who should actively go in search of their quarry.

This idea may immediately conjure up the vision of an intrepid yet seasick landlubber clutching a sopping camera on a bucking, spray-tossed vessel with land a distant memory. But the experience of watching whales in all their glory and their natural setting is incomparable.

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