The sight of a pod of Bryde’s whales breaching the water’s surface is something to behold. Gray-black humps rise and fall, occasionally spouting colossal columns of water 2 to 3 meters high in the air. Their wide mouths slowly extend from the water, capturing thousands of small fish as seagulls circle overhead.

From December to April each year, Bryde’s whales regularly visit the waters near Weizhou Island in the Beibu Gulf between Hainan and the Chinese mainland. They are drawn by the abundant fish and the dozens of hectares of artificial reef where they can hunt, dwell, and mate. Their presence has drawn thousands of Chinese tourists to the remote, volcanic island in hopes of spotting the pod — currently the country’s only known cetacean population.

What makes this small community of whale watchers all the more remarkable is that, as recently as a decade ago, large cetaceans were thought to be extinct off the coast of the Chinese mainland. Whale research in China had stalled by the 1980s, and the handful of academics still working in the field turned more to smaller cetaceans known to be present in the country, such as the Yangtze finless porpoise and the Indo-Pacific humpbacked dolphin. The occasional offshore strandings of whales attracted interest, but were viewed more as chance events than evidence of stable, active populations.

That all changed in March 2016 when Chen Mo, an associate researcher at the Guangxi Academy of Sciences, was sent a clip of possible whale activity by a resident of Xieyang Island, near Weizhou. After looking at more videos taken by fishermen based on the island, Chen suspected there might be Bryde’s whales in the region. He also learned that locals had been seeing the pod for generations; they just hadn’t been able to identify them.

Although his early expeditions turned up nothing, the videos and stories were enough to convince Chen to keep searching. On April 4, 2018, he finally caught a break: Just as he was turning his boat around, an approximately 12-meter-long Bryde’s whale surfaced before him like an apparition. “A column of water erupted from its blowhole, and it reared, its scythe-like dorsal fin and tail piercing the surface to create a wave,” Chen later wrote for Chinese National Geography magazine. “Then it disappeared beneath the dazzling waters.”

Since then, successive expeditions have confirmed the existence of a stable population of Bryde’s whales near Weizhou, making the island the only known habitat and feeding ground for large cetaceans around the Chinese mainland.

Chen’s discovery quickly renewed interest in cetacean research in China, bringing more professionals and resources to the region. In the spring of 2019, Chen’s research team welcomed two new members: Wu Lixin and Xu Jian, well-known underwater cameramen with experience working on nature documentaries. The pair had spent nearly two decades searching for cetaceans in China and are collaborating with Chen on a documentary about the Bryde’s whales. They film the animals on the surface and underwater while the research team records data on the pod’s location and behavior, takes photos for individual identification and health testing, and collects samples.

Chen tells me he now spends roughly 100 days a year on Weizhou. More than half that time is spent at sea during the peak season between December and April. Altogether he has accumulated over 6 terabytes of pictures and video footage of Bryde’s whales, which he hopes to use to bolster protections for the region’s marine ecosystem.

But if the discovery of Bryde’s whales has given new impetus to scientific research and marine conservation, it is also changing the relationship between humans and nature in the Beibu Gulf — and not always for the better.

Researchers have identified human activity, including fishing and whale watching tours, as the greatest threat to the habitat of Bryde’s whales. Chen says that in recent years, his team has observed multiple instances of Bryde’s whales being affected by commercial fishing vessels, with some bearing scars on their backs caused by fishing nets. One now deceased Bryde’s whale, named Monster, had an obvious deformity on its upper jaw, likely caused by getting tangled in fishing nets as a calf.

Fortunately, a number of fishers in the area are shifting to the whale watching business. “Fishermen lead incredibly exhausting lives, and their livelihoods depend on the weather,” Chen says. “There are casualties every year from accidents. Young people nowadays are more inclined to work in the tourism industry.”

It’s not just easier; whale watching tours can be a lucrative source of income for locals, with tickets going for as much as 300 yuan ($41) per person. But the rise of commercial whale watching comes with its own set of challenges. Many tour providers lack professional accreditation and general knowledge about marine conservation. Chen says that some workers fail to maintain reasonable distances and boat speeds during their whale watching tours, an observation corroborated by videos and photos widely available online. A search for “Weizhou Island” on Chinese social media yields plenty of chaotic, disorderly scenes from whale watching tours. “As soon as the whales appeared, more than a dozen speedboats rushed toward them at full speed,” reads one review. “Whale watching boats surrounded the Bryde’s whales, posing a great safety hazard to tourists and whales alike,” reads another.

Ideally, whale watching tours should act in service of species conservation and marine ecology education: By allowing the public to see the whales up close, they can raise awareness of the importance of marine conservation and biodiversity. Yet Weizhou’s burgeoning tourism industry sometimes runs counter to that aim.

To address this challenge, Chen and his team are trying to organize regular public activities to educate workers and tourists about whale watching, as well as to establish norms for boating conditions, noise control, speed, and distance.

In the long run, Chen still believes that the discovery of Bryde’s whales and the rise of whale watching will do more good than harm. In July 2018, the government of Beihai City, which administers Weizhou Island, enacted new fishing regulations meant to curb “destructive” fishing practices around Weizhou and Xieyang islands. Yet Chen says enforcement has been lax, a situation he believes can be fixed by the emergence of a popular — and profitable — tourism industry in the region.

“I think that developing whale watching as an important economic pillar for Weizhou Island and Beihai might prompt management agencies to step up enforcement,” Chen says. “If the whale watching industry brings attention and revenue to the area, the government will not allow its destruction.”

Translator: Katherine Tse; portrait artist: Wang Zhenhao.

(Header image: Bryde’s whales near Beihai, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, 2021. Lai Jian/VCG)