Rival whale watchers came together to turn Southern California’s Dana Point in to the first Whale Heritage Site in the United States.

“[This designation has] been a longtime dream,” says Donna Kalez, co-president of Dana Wharf Sportfishing & Whale Watching. She and Gisele Anderson, vice president of Captain Dave’s, teamed up to bring the title to town.

Designation as a Whale Heritage Site certifies an area has cultural ties and educational, sustainable interactions with whales and dolphins.

“We have more wild dolphin per square mile than anywhere else in the world,” Anderson tells the Los Angeles Times.

Hundreds of thousands of individual whales and dolphins live in the waters between Southern California and Baja, Mexico, and more migrate from Alaska to Mexico between November and April. Today, you can see ten species of whales and dolphins on whale-watching tours off Dana Point, which is located about halfway between San Diego and Los Angeles.

After traveling to areas like Alaska, Hawaii and Australia to observe how other whale-watching operations conduct business, Kalez and Anderson realized the harbor at Dana Point was even more abundant with whales than other famous sites.

“In Boston, they travel four hours to go out and see a humpback whale, and then travel four hours back without seeing anything else,” Kalez says. “The beauty of where we are is that we can travel seven miles to see a humpback whale and on the way back see four kinds of dolphins.”

Kalez’s father, Don Hansen, began running whale-watching tours in Southern California in the 1960s and launched the region’s first whale festivals 50 years ago. These events helped prove Dana Point’s historical, cultural tie to marine mammals.

Other Whale Heritage Site certifies include Hervey Bay in Australia, the Bluff in South Africa, and Tenerife-La Gomera Marine Area in Spain. Recognition as the world’s sixth Whale Heritage Site follows the women’s tag team effort to trademark Dana Point as “The Dolphin & Whale Watching Capital of the World” in 2019.

Now, their beloved waters have earned global recognition.

“It really is something that will solidify Dana Point as the whale watching and dolphin capital of the world,” Kalez says.