Mar Argentino - Monumento Natural Ballena Franca Austral

This slow moving cetacean mammal, which remains floating in the surface once it is dead, was a favorite target of whalers devoted to its commercial exploitation between the XVII and the beginning of the XX century.

In 1935, an International Convention was signed, granting full protection to whales.

Peak numbers occur every winter and spring when whales come to the sheltered shallow waters along the Golfo San Jose and Golfo Nuevo, off the Valdés Peninsula, to mate, breed and bear their young. This probably constitutes the main population of ballenas francas or southern right whales (Eubalaena australis).