South America - Clean Breaks: 500 New Ways to See the World - page 267

358 community and
conServation, ecuador

359 watcH wHaleS feeding in
tHe Strait of magellan

Central America is famous for its ecotourism, yet
Ecuador is fast becoming recognized as a centre
for ecolodges and tours that are managed and
run by local people, often in stunning settings
- in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, high
up in the Andean mountains and among the
mangroves on the Pacific coast.
The pick of these community-based trips
are to Sani Lodge in the Amazon Rainforest;
to Santa Lucía, a lodge in the cloud forests
of the northwestern slopes of the Andes;
and to Oyacachi, a mountain community in
the Cayambe-Coca Ecological Reserve in
northeastern Ecuador.
These and other tours can be organized
through Quito-based company Tropic Ecotours.
Run by Welshman Andy Drumm and an
Ecuadorian, Jascivan Carvalho, the company
has worked with indigenous communities for
over a decade, developing small-scale trips
that provide guests with an insight into the
life of rural communities and the threat to
indigenous lands caused by logging and oil
extraction.
As well as pioneering trips in the Amazon
to meet the Huaorani (see p.270), Tropic runs
trips to meet the Secoya people, an ethnic
minority of fewer than one thousand in the
upper Amazon basin. Tropic only takes small
numbers of guests to visit typical Secoya houses
so as not to overwhelm the local communities.
As a result, these unique adventures provide
guests with a raw sense of discovery time and
time again, while the local communities benefit
from a regular supply of income for medicine and
education.

It's all part of the nature of things, but herring
don't stand a great chance of survival when
there's a group of humpback whales circling
in on them. These enormous marine mammals
work together to catch their prey - some blow
bubbles under the herring while others grunt
and scream to scare them up to the surface.
When the bubbles rise up through the water, the
school of herring form an inescapable tight ball,
the cue for a whale to rise up and gulp down a
healthy mouthful of fish. Job done.
This remarkable spectacle is known as
“bubblenet feeding” and you have a good chance
of seeing it in the Francisco Coloane Marine Park
in the Strait of Magellan, at the southern tip of
South America where the Atlantic and Pacific
oceans collide. It's a historic setting, as the Strait
was once an important navigable passage for
mariners and explorers, especially before the
Panama Canal was built. Nowadays it's home to
Chile's first marine area, set up to protect the
summer feeding-ground for humpback whales,
sea lions and fur seals, and also to conserve the
nesting areas for Magellanic penguins.
A local travel company, Whalesound, run by a
group of conservationists and marine biologists,
organizes three-day boat trips into the Strait of
Magellan to observe the whales, other mammals
and seabirds in the marine park. You stay out
overnight at a campsite built with domed tents
raised on wooden platforms (and connected by
gangplanks) to minimize their impact on the
environment. By staying at such a remote location
- at the foot of the continent - you experience a
strong sense of how harsh and wild a place this is,
while across the continental divide lies Antarctica,
one of the most fragile ecosystems on the planet.
Conservation, in these parts, has a special meaning.

Need to know For details of programmes, prices
and reservations see W www.tropiceco.com;
T [phone].

Need to know Trips depart from Punta Arenas.
For prices, booking and more details about
Whalesound's support of scientific research see
W www.whalesound.com; T [phone].