Península Valdés

Southern right whales arrive in the Golfo Nuevo in June and stay until December, and the boat operators here have been working the same families for generations — whale mothers that were photographed as calves in the 1970s return with their own calves today, identified by the white callosities on their heads. Península Valdés in Chubut Province juts into the South Atlantic as a flat, wind-scoured plateau surrounded on three sides by water, and its wildlife concentration — whales, orcas, elephant seals, Magellanic penguins, and guanacos — is the reason a UNESCO committee declared it a World Heritage Site in 1999.

Península Valdés covers 3,625 square kilometres of Patagonian steppe and coastline, protected since 1983 as a provincial reserve. The orca hunting behaviour on the beaches of Caleta Valdés — where the killer whales intentionally beach themselves to catch sea lion pups in the shallow surf — is one of the most dramatic predator behaviours documented anywhere on Earth, occurring only here and at a single beach in the Crozet Islands. The Golfo Nuevo and Golfo San José effectively make the peninsula an island except for its narrow isthmus, creating a sheltered environment that concentrates marine life unlike anywhere else on the Atlantic coast. Puerto Madryn, the nearest city, has been the base for scientific research into these whale populations since the early 1970s, and the local whale-watching industry has provided the funding for four decades of longitudinal research.