Unregulated tourism risks disrupting Timor-Leste’s whale migration

DILI, Timor-Leste — Whale tourism in Timor-Leste is booming. Tour operators report a healthy number of sightings and full bookings in the peak season of September to December, when hundreds of pygmy blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda) make the journey through the Ombai-Wetar Strait on their way south to western Australia.

Customers splurge $5,000 for a week of swimming with the lite version of the world’s largest animal in a country that has unmatched potential for whale watching, because of its deep, nutrient-rich waters close to the shore and relatively undisturbed marine environment.

“For me, the whales represent the health of the ecosystem — they’re the most visible sign of something much bigger happening below the surface,” local conservationist and photographer Jafet Potenzo Lopes tells Mongabay in an interview. “When a blue whale or sperm whale passes along the coast, it’s not just a sighting; it’s a reminder that this coastline is still functioning in a way that many places have lost.”

Timor-Leste’s marine mammal “superhighway,” traversed by migrating blue and sperm whales and resident pods of pilot whales, orcas and dolphins, attracts tourists from around the world. Operators are already fully booked for 2026 and 2027. “Even though [whale] encounters are never guaranteed, tourists will always try their luck,” says Rechelle Trasmonte, a Philippine national and dive organizer at Compass Diving, one of Timor-Leste’s six major whale tour operators.

This season, however, serious concerns about malpractice have emerged. In an open letter shared with Mongabay in November, British underwater photographer Ollie Clarke described what he witnessed while working alongside multiple operators — and said all were breaking well-established rules for responsible whale watching.

For instance, too many swimmers crowding the whale, too many boats chasing the same pod, swimmers repeatedly dropping in on top of the whale every time it surfaced to breathe, and no checking if a whale was traveling with a calf.

Clarke, based near Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef — a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for strict, certified ecotours with whale sharks and humpback whales — says this kind of conduct stems largely from poor communication among increasingly competitive tour operators. Boats have been “aggressively converging” on the same whales, he says, even when drone footage from other operators could have shown other whales nearby and reduced pressure on the one pod.

Once one operator breaks the rules, others will follow — it’s a race to the bottom, Clarke tells Mongabay. “This is a message to the operators — take some time before the season to train your skippers and start caring about this special wildlife which is making you money. And before you all start pointing fingers — everyone is doing it badly,” he wrote in the letter.

The whale-watching industry in Timor-Leste is still young — less than 10 years old — and the country could be the best place in the world to encounter these animals ethically, Clarke says. But he warns the situation could get worse before it gets better, as more international tour operators set up shop to cash in on the tourism boom.

“Bad practice is driven by customer pressure for the perfect Instagram video,” says Laura McGuire, a British scuba and free-diving instructor based on Atauro, the island that hosts a number of tour operators. Many guests — which include “bucket listers,” underwater photographers, and “influencers” sometimes dressed in mermaid costumes and thong bikinis — feel entitled to see the whales after spending thousands of dollars, which puts pressure on operators to deliver, she says.

The impact of abusive whale watching

Australian national Robert Crean is the owner of Compass Diving, which has operated tours since 2019. He says his boats carry no more than six swimmers, but he has noticed other boats with up to 12. His boat skippers are highly experienced, and if they don’t obey the rules, “I will send them home,” he says. Crean acknowledges the need for better staff training, not only on whale-swimming protocol but on whale biology, conservation, and the likely impact of human intervention on migration patterns.

“If we do not police the rules then there will be no whale migration — and nothing to swim with,” he tells Mongabay in an email.

That fear is shared by marine ecologist Karen Edyvane, a professor at Charles Darwin University in Australia, who has monitored whales in Timor-Leste waters since 2016. With each busier season, she says, the risk grows that Timor-Leste could follow Sri Lanka, where blue whale sightings have crashed off the southwest coast, partly due to unmanaged tourism pressure.

Edyvane has documented boats striking whales, and also regularly observed defensive behavior, particularly among sperm whales; a small population of fewer than 100 individuals annually migrates through Timor-Leste’s waters. Excessive human interactions with boats and swimmers, she says, could not only disrupt mating, calving and nursing behavior but deprive mothers of vital rest between feeding their young.

For pygmy blue whales, the danger is losing energy from having to avoid boats and swimmers. These whales migrate 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) south from Indonesia’s Banda Sea and are constantly on the move. In recent years, Edyvane has observed that many passing Timor-Leste’s coast are emaciated — a likely consequence of ocean warming disrupting the cold-water upwellings that supply their food.

“You shouldn’t be stopping any animal from feeding, mating or nursing, particularly when they are already struggling with the impacts of climate change,” Edyvane tells Mongabay in an interview in Dili, the Timor-Leste capital.

No scientific studies yet exist on tourism impacts on Timor-Leste’s migrating whales, largely due to a lack of funding. But Edyvane warns that whale tourism done badly risks damaging the resource it depends on, and also ongoing, land-based pygmy blue whale monitoring and research efforts. “Increasingly, we are seeing tour boats intruding into our research areas, where we are trying to record rarely observed, important natural behaviors, like courtship, mating, calving and nursing, without human disturbance,” Edyvane says.

The least impactful whale-watching and whale research in Timor-Leste, she argues, is really best done from shore — and Timor-Leste, with its steep coastline, has some of the best land-based whale watching in the world.

The regulation gap

Timor-Leste’s whale tourism industry direly needs regulation, experts say. A policy was drafted in 2018 but shelved after a change of government. A blue economy unit was created in 2023, and a national blue economy master plan released in September includes whale-watching rules, but these have yet to be enacted.

Fizzy Moslim, a Malaysian national and former whale tour guide turned consultant who has advised the government, says implementation has been slow because responsibility for whale tourism cuts across several ministries — environment, fisheries, transport and tourism — making coordination “complicated.”

She notes that in a country still rebuilding after years of Indonesian occupation, whale tourism competes for attention with issues like illegal fishing and coastal erosion. She adds that heavy criticism from foreign “parachute know-it-alls,” who leave in outrage after the season, has not made progress on regulation any easier.

But progress in rolling out regulations has also been hindered by a lack of technical expertise in government and its advisors, says Edyvane. “Implementing whale-watching reform is not just about talking with whale tour operators, underwater photographers and filmmakers — it needs advice from independent authorities and experts who understand implementing complex government regulations, licensing, accreditation and enforcement. Crucially, it needs advice from whale biologists.”

She suggests the Timorese government should take up an offer of technical guidance offered by the International Whaling Commission and Australian experts, using whale-watching rules deployed in Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef as an example of best practice.

Operators themselves are pushing for reform. Several have jointly drafted a letter to the prime minister urging regulation. “There is still a lot we can do better,” Sapharahn Juma, manager at Atauro Dive Resort, tells Mongabay in an email. “Every year we learn something new. A lot of training is needed, and penalties need to be in place for those who break the guidelines.”

‘Extractive, neocolonial’ ecotourism

Many Timorese say they feel alienated from the whale tourism industry: none of the major operators are locally owned, and the workforce is largely limited to boat skippers and scuba tank carriers.

McGuire describes the industry as having an “extractive, neocolonial” quality — a foreign-run business operating in Timorese waters with limited investment in local people.

Edyvane agrees, pointing to recurring issues with visa and tax compliance, an issue raised last year in a post by Timorese democracy nonprofit Fundasaun Mahein. Some foreign tour guides operate on tourist visas without work permits, and provide paid services in the country while being compensated overseas — income that’s not declared or taxed locally.

“The consequence is significant economic leakage,” says Lopes, who runs expeditions to see saltwater crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus).

“For a developing country trying to build its sustainable tourism sector, this is harmful not only to the whales but to Timor-Leste’s economy and its capacity to regulate the sector properly,” Lopes says.

The combination of a regulation vacuum, pressure to deliver guaranteed in-water encounters, and the exclusion of Timorese has created an industry that is “operating far outside what most people would consider responsible or ethical whale tourism,” he says.

Improving the sector will require more than tweaking guidelines. “If Timor-Leste wants sustainable whale tourism, then regulation, enforcement and legal compliance need to come before expansion,” Lopes says. “Only after these foundations are in place can operators realistically claim to be offering ethical whale swimming experiences.”

Banner image: A diver swimming close to a female sperm whale pod.

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Philip Jacobson Editor

This story first appeared on Mongabay

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