Paper long abstract:

This paper builds on ethnographic data gathered in the Azores (Portugal) from 1998 to 2006) in the whaling village of Lajes do Pico. It scrutinizes the many expectations that whale watching tourists hold prior to whale watching trips in regards to whales and dolphins. More particularly, the paper describes several constructs through which cetaceans, as well as human-cetacean encounters, are imagined and anticipated. The paper shows how these expectations are greatly influenced by western myths, whaler stories such as Moby Dick, Hollywood movies, and TV series. Finally, the paper analyzes the extent to which these imaginary worlds become part of human-cetacean encounters, and the many ways in which they variously promote or inhibit an, experiential, aesthetically based understanding of human-environmental relations.