• Animals & Birds
• Fish
• Whales & Marine Mammals
• Habitat Preservation

In Brief Articles

Protecting Whales from Dangerous Sonar
News

NRDC intensifies the campaign to secure precautions against military sonar's deadly effects.

Fieldwork: Bad Vibes
OnEarth

The U.S. Navy has developed an underwater sonar system that can literally kill marine mammals. This profile of NRDC attorney Joel Reynolds describes his work to keep the seas silent.

Whale Nursery Saved
News

Mitsubishi and the Mexican government announced on March 2, 2000 that they are abandoning plans to build a massive industrial salt plant in southern Baja California. The Mexican government had proposed to construct the saltworks in partnership with the Mitsubishi Corporation of Japan at Laguna San Ignacio, the last undisturbed birthing and nursery grounds of the gray whale.

U.N. World Heritage Conference
History

In late 1998, a team of NRDC experts and partners in the campaign to save the gray whale nursery in Laguna San Ignacio, Mexico attended a meeting of the United Nations World Heritage Committee in Kyoto, Japan. To focus international attention on a proposed industrial salt factory in Laguna San Ignacio, the last untouched nursery of the Pacific gray whale, the team urged the Committee to designate the lagoon and two others making up the "Whale Sanctuary of El Vizcaino" as a World Heritage Site "In Danger". In March 2000, Mitsubishi and the Mexican government abandoned their plans for the saltworks.

Laguna San Ignacio Gray Whale Nursery
Photo Album

Laguna San Ignacio in Baja California, Mexico is best known as winter home to the gray whale. Every year the whales migrate over 10,000 miles between their summer feeding grounds above the Arctic Circle and the coastal waters of Baja. They have adopted the warm, shallow waters of the lagoons along the west coast of the Baja peninsula for their calving nurseries. Here they spend the months of December to March birthing, feeding their calves, breaching and spyhopping, joined by hardy ecotourists.

Mission to Laguna San Ignacio
History

Getting this close to a gray whale is rare for anyone, but for those on this special journey -- including actors Pierce Brosnan and Glenn Close -- living with the magnificent gray whales for five days touched them deeply, and in some cases changed their lives.