Local museum also educates visitors about cetaceans
Don’t call any of these people Ishmael. In fact, Oscar Guzon of Mazatlan’s MUNBA Expeditions makes it clear that he and his colleagues would have nothing in common with the fanatical Captain Ahab and his fellow whalers who pursued the Great White Whale in Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick.
“We are friends of whales, not foes. We love whales,” says Guzon, whose company has seasonal whale-watching expeditions and who was also instrumental in the opening of Mazatlan’s MUNBA museum, an acronym for National Whale Museum, and which educates visitors about cetaceans, including the many whales that winter off Mazatlan’s shores.”This is a museum about our relationship with whales.”
Guzon, whose work has taken him to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, is clearly enthusiastic about whales and helping safeguard them, with the marine ecologist having been studying humpback whales for over 20 years. He labels Mexican oceans a “breeding ground for different whales,” with, for instance, thousands of humpbacks wintering in them.
Those who go on MUNBA Expeditions’ December-March whale-watching tours – which use canopied Zodiac-like boats – are virtually certain to spot whales, he says, and those tours use specialized equipment that can enable clients to actually hear whales communicate underwater.
Marine safaris available in the rest of the year provide sightings of other aquatic creatures, including dolphins, turtles and sea lions. Some of the money raised from the tours is used to help fund the museum, which has hosted over 73,000 visitors since opening in July 2024.
The museum includes 35 skeletons – some of them massive – of actual whales and has two replica skeletons.
Leading-edge technology also helps inform visitors about whales, with those visitors working their way from one room to another, each room telling a different story. One is devoted to the evolution of whales, for instance, while another tells of the whaling industry, with Guzon noting that some 200 years of commercial whaling led to millions of whales being killed.
Curiously, Melville himself spent time in Mazatlan, where he worked on some of his tales.
Whaling is still practiced by a handful of countries and whales must deal with other threats, such as possibly being struck by ships and becoming entangled with fishing nets, with Guzon having joined others in skillfully freeing some whales that became caught up in netting.
Museum visitors will also gain insights into remarkable whale abilities, including sperm whales being able to dive to more than 1,500 meters, prompting Guzon to label them “kings of the abyss.”
Meanwhile, Guzon says MUNBA whale-watching expeditions gather data that can help provide valuable insights into those whales that gather in local waters each winter but that’s not the only benefit those tours deliver
“Actually, watching whales is very fun,” he states.
More information is available at munbaexpedtions.mx.
