From Australia to Japan, California to Chile, surfers around the world are uniting to protect humpback whales from world No.1 hunter Japan - by getting towns and communities to adopt the giant mammals.
Sixty towns in Australia alone have adopted whales under the initiative by Surfers for Cetaceans, set up by surfers to protect whales and dolphins. Communities from New York to New Zealand have also signed up.
Cetaceans is the name of the family that comprises dolphins, whales and porpoises.
"The purpose is to acknowledge the bond between all of us who live on coastlines around the world with the whales who are migrating or living in the areas that we also live in," Dave Rastovich, surfer and a founder of the group, told Reuters on Thursday on the fringes of the annual International Whaling Commission meeting hosted by Chile.
In Australia, the markings on humpbacks' tails - dubbed fingerprints because they are unique - are lifted up over the entrances of towns that have adopted whales so the flourishing whale-watching industry there can identify its adoptees.
"No longer are they just a whale out there in the ocean, they are a whale with a story, a name, a family, a history and a personality. There are some that are theatrical in their approach when they come in touch with humans."
The project is also intended as a deterrent to the whaling fleet of Japan, which has skirted a 1986 moratorium on commercial whale hunting by giving itself a quota to catch 1,000 whales a year in the name of scientific research.
Humpback whales are considered a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
"It creates a connection and therefore motivation to intervene when these (hunting) threats come up," said Rastovich, whose group has tied up with surfing in communities from Portugal to California, France to Chile.
Rastovich has a very personal connection with whales and dolphins. Two days after founding Surfers for Cetaceans four years ago, a dolphin warded off a Tiger Shark that approached him as he was surfing.
"All over the world we're riding waves with dolphins, shoulder to shoulder, experiencing the joy of surfing and experiencing the joy of living in a clean environment," he said.
"There's this incredible connection across species. We're enjoying the same act of simply riding a wave. You see them riding waves for the exact same reasons we do, just the joy of going fast and the joy of the free ride in the ocean."
