Some 1,200 whales arrive each year off Colombia’s coast and make their home in the natural marine reserves of Gorgona, Sanquianga and Utria, an area off Colombia’s western coast that boasts the world’s highest whale birth rate (28 percent of the total).The arrival of these cetaceans also draws large numbers of tourists to observe species such as the Blue, Bryde’s, Minke and Humpback whales, which remain in the region until the end of November.These marine mammals look to mate, calve and rear their young in seas whose temperature rises to 25 C, as is the case in Colombian waters off the coastal towns of Nuqui, Bahia Solano and Bahia Malaga, before returning as a group to Antarctica.The humpback whales, so named because they arch their backs before they dive, are the most acrobatic of all whale species and that elasticity is seen in the whales’ jumps, tail swishing and other movements.That species can grow to a length of up to 18 meters and a weight of up to 40 tons and is either gray or black in color with a white underbelly.The ministry also noted in its report the humpbacks’ attractive and complex songs, audible at a distance of more than 12 kilometers (about 7.5 miles), and their enormous pectoral fins, which measure up to five meters (16 feet), or up to one-third of their body length. EFE