The second Humpback Whales World Congress (HWWC) has been concluded on July 7th in Reunion island. Scientists have travelled from all over the world to evoke the giant of the seas. A unique opportunity for these specialists to meet, exchange and create partnerships for a common goal: know better to protect better.

These whales are named because of a bump. For Latin's nostalgic: the megaptera Novaeangliae. It is one that can't be forgotten: it jumps out of the water, sings under...
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The second Humpback Whales World Congress (HWWC) has been concluded on July 7th in Reunion island. Scientists have travelled from all over the world to evoke the giant of the seas. A unique opportunity for these specialists to meet, exchange and create partnerships for a common goal: know better to protect better.

These whales are named because of a bump. For Latin's nostalgic: the megaptera Novaeangliae. It is one that can't be forgotten: it jumps out of the water, sings under water, its pectorals are the longest of Creation and it travels thousands of kilometers to return to breed in the seas in which they are born. As for those who have crossed its eyes, they say that their life have been changed forever.

So they obviously gather. Scientists came from all over the world to talk about it: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Madagascar, United States, Pakistan, Dominica Republican, Belgium, France, Kenya, Mozambique. Twenty-nine countries in all: they held one plane after the other to meet in Reunion island, a French volcanic island in the Indian Ocean, which hosted the second world conference on humpback whales from July 3rd to 7th.

An event that welcomed the arrival of cetaceans. After a 5000km journey from the cold Antarctic waters where they feed, they come to give birth and mate, each year between June and September, in the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean.

In this immensity (the Indian Ocean represents about 20% of the terrestrial globe surface), a place remains however privileged in the eyes of the marine mammal: Sainte Marie island. Located along the eastern coast of Madagascar, this 70 km long and 5 km wide pole sees whales each year returning along its reefs. A strategic place to study an animal still little known despite the attention that the scientists show.

This paradise island is Cetamada base camp, the Malagasy association which organized the first world congress on humpback whales in Sainte Marie. One crazy bet to bring together specialists from around the world on a small piece of land. Bet wins! which is taking off : the third Humpback Whales World Congress will fly to Quebec, Canada, in September 2020. A few minutes after Henry Bellon, President of Cetamada, made this announcement, Joy Reidenberg, a leading specialist in anatomy and a must-see figure for cetaceans, was already worried about not being able to be present ... A sign that the HWWC becomes inescapable.

So it's time to put faces on those men and women who dedicate their lives to preserve our oceans ...
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