Brazilian citizen scientists see humpbacks return decades after mass
killings
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[July 29, 2023]
By Leonardo Benassatto
ILHA BELA, Brazil (Reuters) - Julio Cardoso leans over the side of a
boat to photograph a humpback whale as it slaps its giant tail into the
water off Brazil's southeastern coast.
Like other citizen scientists, as they are known, Cardoso uses the
photographs to collect information on the numbers of the marine mammals,
helping researchers and scientists track the surging numbers of
humpbacks in the area.
"It's a group of people, volunteers, we work on board and on different
boats and we have people looking from land, so we've got very good
information about the presence of humpback whales here," said Cardoso, a
retiree who set up the whale spotting project, known as Baleia a Vista,
in 2015.
There has been a dramatic increase in the number of whales off Ilha
Bela's coast in recent years, and many now return to their original
breeding grounds all along the Brazilian coast where they used to be
killed en masse for their blubber, says scientist Jose Truda Palazzo.
"These animals survived whaling with a very, very small population
remaining... something between 300 to 500 animals," Palazzo, of the
Humpback Whale Institute in the state of Bahia, said.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Jul/29/images/ads/current/graue_sda_042021.png)
Palazzo says that after legal protections were put in place in the
1980's, the whales - which only produce one calf every two to three
years - started to increase. In their last census in 2022, 30,000 of the
animals were registered in Brazil's waters.
Palazzo says the work of the self-funded citizen scientist volunteers is
"extremely helpful" in the task of tracking the animals, as a lot of
conservation projects are underfunded and lack resources.
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![](../images/072923PIX/news_g13.jpg)
Humpback whales swim at the coast of
Ilhabela, state of Sao Paulo, Brazil July 23, 2023. REUTERS/Leonardo
Benassatto
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2019/Sep/05/images/ads/current/stclara_lda_SPONSOR_090519.png)
Cardoso and his team photograph the whales' tales, which is the best
way to identify them as, like human fingerprints, no two tails are
identical. They upload the photos onto the HappyWhale website, a
global whale watching platform that uses image processing algorithms
to match whale photos with scientific collections.
"Photo ID can give you insights into the life history of
individuals, but also allows you to understand population dynamics
better by knowing this animal's movements, how they migrate and
intersect with other populations," said Palazzo.
Some of the humpbacks they have spotted in Brazil have come from or
made it to Antarctica, Patagonia, the African coast and there was
one that made it all the way from Australia.
Palazzo says the surge of whales in Ilha Bela is great news for
marine conservation, not only in Brazil, but worldwide.
"It shows that if we can do effective protection for marine species,
most of them will recover," he said.
(Reporting by Leonardo Benassatto; Additional reporting and writing
by Steven Grattan; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
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