How a south China island balances conservation and tourism

NANNING, April 22 (Xinhua) -- On a cloudless morning during the Spring Festival holiday, an 11-passenger speedboat hummed along at low throttle, slipping out of the harbor on Weizhou Island, a volcanic outcrop off the coast of Beihai in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Once known primarily as a quiet refuge of pristine beaches, the 24-square-kilometer island has become the unlikely center of an experiment in marine coexistence.

It did not take long for the passengers to find what they had come for. About 30 minutes into the excursion, the captain closed the engine. The boat drifted in silence, broken only by the gentle slap of water against the hull. Then came the sound -- a sharp and rhythmic whoosh as the dark, sleek dorsal fin of a Bryde's whale sliced the surface.

For the passengers, it was an awe-inspiring spectacle. But for local officials, it represented the payoff of nearly a decade of painstaking policy work, habitat restoration and careful engagement with the island's fishing community.

Bryde's whales -- a first-class protected species in China that can grow up to 15 meters long and weigh up to 20 tonnes -- had all but vanished from these waters for decades.

But now, this stretch of the gulf is the country's only known inshore site where the animals appear reliably each year, arriving in December and lingering until April.

The turning point came in 2018, when the region passed the Weizhou Island Ecological Protection Regulations, the first such statute expressly written to shield a single island's waters, beaches and core habitats.

The same year, researchers from Nanjing Normal University began a formal monitoring partnership with the local government after the first scientific sightings in April.

Data show that in 2022, local authorities invested more than 100 million yuan (about 14.6 million U.S. dollars) in a major coral-reef restoration project. What had been a struggling 2,000-square-meter patch of reef has since expanded more than 150-fold to 300,000 square meters. Fish populations multiplied more than sixfold, helping rebuild the marine food chain.

Monitoring data from the Nanjing Normal University team shows that the identifiable Bryde's whale population around Weizhou has grown from roughly 10 individuals in 2018 to more than 70 today, making it the largest known stable inshore group of its kind in the world.

In November 2025, the island's tourism authority and the university signed a long-term agreement to create a dedicated monitoring and technology center -- tangible proof, one official said, that policy here is now guided by science.

For the residents of Weizhou Island, the recovery of the Bryde's whale population has brought new opportunities to the local economy. Once a quiet outpost dominated by subsistence fishing and the uncertainties of the sea, Weizhou is now experiencing growth in its marine tourism sector, with whale-based tourism serving as a welcome addition.

Visitor numbers have surged, jumping from roughly 1.53 million in 2018 to more than 2.13 million in 2023 -- the first time the island crossed the two-million mark -- and rising further to 2.24 million in 2024, according to Beihai tourism authorities.

Whale-watching has turned the once-quiet winter off-season into a major attraction. During the 2026 Spring Festival, daily crowds exceeded 2,000, according to official data.

Liang Chunmei, head of Weizhou Township, said nearly 200 households still fish in the traditional way. Many of them help guard the whales. But the promise of reliable income has proved irresistible for some.

A former fisherman who goes by the name Azhen once spent weeks at sea for a modest catch, but now works as a whale-watching guide. "The switch is about stability," he said. "With the whales here, the 'harvest' is more consistent. As long as the weather cooperates, the tourists will just keep coming."

Local government and professional tourism operators have tried to manage the whale-based tourism boom responsibly.

Two community-run speedboat "clubs" have folded independent boat owners into a single professional fleet, said Liu Haiming, a deputy general manager of a local tourism operator. "And all tours now run through a unified booking platform with fixed prices -- 298 yuan per person in the regular season, 398 yuan during major national holidays -- and follow national maritime safety rules that ban reckless 'whale chasing.'"

The island has also built the country's first Bryde's whale science education center with help from Nanjing Normal University and a Beijing-based environmental foundation.

"It is now mandatory for tourists to sit through briefings delivered by trained staffers before every trip, explaining the mammals' biology and the rules of respectful watching," said Liu, who noted that the aim of the practice is to turn spectators into participants in the conservation efforts.

However, striking the right balance between conservation and economic growth remains fairly challenging.

The effort was tested in early 2026 when a local fishing boat returning from a fishing run accidentally grazed the back of a medium-sized whale. The injury was not fatal, and the whale is now on the path to full recovery. Shortly after the incident, local authorities suspended all whale-watching tours on March 15 until further notice.

The episode highlighted the inherent friction between humans and marine animals in shared busy waters.

Studies show that whales are acoustic creatures, and the constant humming of boat engines can interfere with nursing and feeding, even if no physical contact occurs.

"The issue is that their activity zones have no borders and often overlap with high-traffic areas where humans live and work," said Liang.

Protecting "fenceless" patches of ocean is a daunting task for the island's overstretched authorities.

The Weizhou fisheries and marine law enforcement team oversees roughly half of Beihai's sea area and is responsible for policing more than 900 local vessels, plus occasional "migrant" trawlers from neighboring provinces.

"Sometimes, we are like a police car trying to stop a massive heavy-duty truck," said one law enforcement official, describing the difficulty of intercepting large 40-meter trawlers that sometimes stray into the whales' core habitat with limited staffing and equipment.

To tighten control, the local government has rolled out upgraded electronic "fencing" and real-time vessel tracking. New rules also require boats to drop to idle or minimal engine power within 100 meters of a whale sighting, impose strict speed limits, and cap the number of vessels allowed in protected zones to prevent overcrowding.

"Bryde's whales choosing to come here to feed and raise their young is a vote of confidence for our ecosystem," said an official from the local environmental protection bureau. "This is not protection for protection's sake, it is protection that creates jobs and ensures future generations can see the same whales their grandparents once took for granted."