where the hunters became guardians
In Caniçal, the easternmost tip of Madeira, the whaleboats no longer go out to sea. But what stayed on land says a lot about who lived here and what they did to survive. Two lookout posts were built at the ends of the island in the 1940s, the whalers arrived from the Azores, and on 2 February 1941 the first sperm whale was killed off Porto Moniz. That date marks the start of an industry that lasted decades and ended without much ceremony.
The Museu da Baleia da Madeira organises all of that in more than a thousand square metres of permanent exhibition split into two rooms with opposite logics: one looks back, the other dives into the present. In the hunting room you find two original whaleboats, a mosaic made of 84 photographs of real whalers, and the reconstruction of the whole chain, from the network of lookouts to the processing factory, the so-called Traiol. In the cetacean room, life-size models and 3D films show what still swims in those waters, now without a single harpoon in sight.
What makes this museum specific isn't the subject itself, it's the seas of Madeira as a concrete setting. The scientific research done here on cetaceans is about these animals, in these waters, not a generic collection. The transition from a community that hunted to one that today studies and conserves is documented with enough rigour to make clear it wasn't a romantic turn, it was a necessity.
what you'll find
- two original whaleboats on display
- stereoscopic 3D films about cetaceans
- a photographic mosaic with portraits of whalers from Caniçal
- a public library integrated into the museum
