Living in Peru : your everyday companion

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How many times have we watched the marvelous leaps between waves by dolphins in Peru's ocean? Something that seems so natural to us is very rare in foreign seas. The German biologist Stefan Austermühle has studied these marine mammals the past four years in Peru, which gave him the idea of an activity to promote the conservation of dolphins and improve the fishermen’s lives: dolphin watching.

By Tatian Palla, Somos Magazine
Photos by Stefan Austermühle
Adapted from Spanish by Diana Schwalb

Few know that Peru is a privileged country in regards to dolphin watching: while at other latitudes, the possibilities of seeing a dolphin after traveling one kilometer of coast are slim, a few miles off the beaches from Chorrillos to Paracas, you can easily find three or six dolphins. Stefan Austermühle has counted them. Not only that: As if he were managing a personal register system, he constantly photographs their fins and identifies them by their cuts or scratches.

Ever since he began counting, Austermühle has accumulated over 70 thousand pictures of fins of bottlenose dolphins, or tursiops truncates, the official name. “There are 1,512 dolphins that can be seen in this part of the coast,”  he says. “Six hundred of them live here permanently. The problem is that there is a black market for dolphin meat.”

A love for animals
Stefan Austermühle is not new to the issue. When he was 18 and a student in Germany, he joined the Greenpeace. He participated in other organizations and in 1998 ended up exchanging emails with Nina Pardo, who back then was the administrator of a group dedicated to animal protection in Peru. From topics of work, they moved on to more personal ones, and after several months, Stefan decided to come to Peru to marry her.

Together, they founded the NGO Mundo Azul, with which they work on environmental education and animal rescue, in addition to carrying out scientific studies that include the evaluation of our marine and sub-marine biodiversity and the types of habitats there are in our coasts. 


In 1996, the NGO with which Nina worked had promoted the adoption of Law 26585 that banned dolphin hunting in Peru's ocean to sell the meat. However, shortly after initiating is operations, Austermühle found alarming evidence that suggested that this law was not being respected nor enforced. While poaching of dolphins near the coast had stopped, the biologist started to find slices of dolphin further from the coast (specifically, the Dusky Dolphin, or delfin oscuro in Spanish), where the crime is less evident.

Dolphin meat at four soles per kilo
While before 1996 it was possible to find muchame (dolphin meat) at high prices in the local supermarkets, after the ban the business migrated to a different sector. “Now, fishermen don’t touch the bottlenose dolphin; they hunt the darker dolphins instead,” says Austermühle. “Once offshore, they cut out the meat in the ship’s hold and throw the bodies back in the sea to get rid of the evidence.” This mild meat is sold at S/. 4 per kilo. Guanays, sea lions and sea turtles face the same fate.

The director of Mundo Azul estimates that, due to the lack of control and difficulty to catch the poachers red-handed, it could well be three thousand dark dolphins a year that end up filleted and illegally sold at a fish market. In the fishing town of Salaverry in Trujillo, the biologist identifies a family of fishermen that sold muchame. He reported them and three members of the family were captured but they claimed that it was the "first time" they had done it and were released shortly.

If there are so many dolphin bodies floating in the ocean or washed up on the shore, how many live dolphins are there left and what can be done to protect them? That is why Austermühle has counted over 1,500 dolphins between Chorrillos and Paracas. They are not merely decorative in the sea, they are crucial for their environment. Due their long lives (from 30 to 80 years depending on the specie), dolphins and whales are excellent indicators of the marine ecosystem’s health for their sensitivity to changes in their life conditions. Their deaths or sicknesses clearly say that something is wrong. Additionally, they are at the top of the food chain so they are in charge of eliminating sick or weak fish and cooperating in avoiding the propagation of sicknesses among other species.

Tourism for conservation
Mundo Azul makes an effort to protect dolphins while studying them and promoting them among the population giving them the possibility of sustainable development off our coasts: touristic watching of these wonderful animals playing and jumping in the waves. After working on the registering of these mammals for three years thanks to foreign donations (expeditions are expensive; an offshore 25 day investigation can cost up to 10 thousand dollars), Mundo Azul raises money for further research by guiding tourist expeditions to watch dolphins and night-time scuba diving in Pucusana.

There is no better way to maintain them in their habitat than with tourism. Stefan is sure of that. Both artisanal fishermen and dolphins alike can take advantage of this.

tags : Dolphin Peru travel tourism

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5 Comments

# Vassnia Nizama says :
12 May, 2010 [ 08:52 ]

I have seen the dolphins these days and i feel it is an honour we have them in our coasts, but i fear for them too because i know some of our  fisherman are unable to appreciate how valuable they are. I think the most effective here to get the public attention is to expose the risk the dolphins are under, on tv news. Recently i even saw a cooking program showing in a gracious way how wonderful some chef was at preparing the dolphin meat muchame at a very popular local restaurant. I really fear these people will reduce our visitors who are unprotected in our peruvian coats, because they dont care about the dolphins, but only about their profits. We always see how us.. humans destroy the natural balance of everything.. will we wait to see in the news that those 1500 dolphins are way less?. We have to do something about this...

# Jessica Madrid says :
16 May, 2010 [ 07:02 ]

I'm a surfer living here in Lima.  I love surfing with the dolphins which happens so frequently.    I love watching them from the costa verde, it's a better performance than Sea World could ever offer. 

Killing dolphins for meat is unacceptable,  and not even healthy for human consumption due to it's high mercury content.  I am against killing dolphins and against dolphins IN CAPTIVITY!!!   In Lima we have dolphins in Captivity right next to the coast at LA HERADURA!  I HATE IT, and we surfers are guilty of walking right past it with out notice!

A few yards from the ocean shore where dolphins frequent, there is a very small pool on land where two dolphins live miserably.  I want to raise awareness about this!!  There is no reason for this to occur when we have the benefit of watching dolphins in their natural environment so conveniently here in Lima.  

Watch the movie "The Cove" ..... then tell me what you think about dolphins in captivity.

# Marie Alvarez-Calderon says :
18 May, 2010 [ 06:05 ]

Thank you for a wonderful article! We have loved watching dolphins for the past 12 years from the patio of our beach house south of the Asia beaches. The first day we visited Conchitas beach, it was their gymnastics in the surf that compelled us to buy a lot and build there.
Unfortunately, we have noticed that the number of dolphins seems to be less these years. Jet skis are particularly disturbing to their habitat. Skis are banned at our beach, but we cannot stop the roving skis that invade our waters from other beaches.
To me, eating dolphin meat is as repugnant as eating horse or dog. Dolphins are clearly our friends. Let's leave them in peace.

# STEVE SIPMAN says :
22 May, 2010 [ 09:29 ]

Good work Stefan.  I especially liked what the surfer said.  Here in Hawai`i the county council of Maui outlawed keeping dolphins in captivity for public amusement.  Anyone who does this coud be sentenced to captivity themselves. 

The first and best surfers in the world are not Hawaiians or Peruvians, they are the he dolphins who have been doing it for 10 or twenty million years.  In 1977 Ken LeVasseur and I  freed two bottlenose dolphins from the Honolulu research lab where we worked as student researchers and care-takers.  We were convicted of grand theft.  Now, on four of the other Hawaiian islands (Maui, Molokai, Lanai and Kahoolawe), we got the law passed which protects dolphins and whales from captivity. 

I love Peru and its people and I pray some day dolphins and whales will be respected and enjoyed as offshore indigenous tribes whose intelligence and right to live in the sea is considered more important than killing them for cheap mercury contaminated meat.

# missing mucciame says :
26 May, 2010 [ 12:33 ]

So why is illegal to eat dolphins and legal to eat cows? both are mammals..."chancho marino" is a cheap source of protein for the poor people...eating dolphins should be acceptable as eating cows or pigs...and if you thing they are endangered ask any fisherman in Callao, Paita or any other fishing village, there are tons of them and number growing (except for the pink dolphin in the amazon, another story). Even NGOs recognize bottlenose dolphins are not a endangered species.
Fear of the species getting endangered or overhunted? Legalize and control their fishing, or allow dolphin farms, where they can be slaughtered in a more controled and less brutal way, the same way we have "camales" for cows and pigs. Who gave you the moral authority to criticize other people's eating traditions? Just because your western upbringing says that dolphins (or Dogs in the Koreas) are not animals that are to be eaten doesn't give you the right to critize other people's traditions.
Have you been to a "camal" (slaughterhouse) in Lima? What about in "provincias"? Why don't you complain about cruelty in those places? Oh, I forgot, cows are not cute and pigs don't surf with me...
Why would you think if a big group of people from India (that don't eat cowmeat) start boicotting slaughterhouses in the US because for them it is culturally a no-no to kill cows? Most probably you will say that's the way we do it here, we eat a lot of cowmeat and proud of it, now go back to your country.
And if you are part of the "pituco" minority following this "love the dolphins" fad comming from overseas, be sure the vast majority of poor peruvians will welcome any source of cheap protein for their kids, even if coming from dolphins...they don't have the time or the energy to surf with them

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