While navigating in the Saguenay–St. Lawrence Marine Park, you are in the marine mammals habitat.
When a marine mammal approaches or is close to you, your presence can disturb and cause the animal to change its normal behaviours. He might stop feeding, resting, taking care of its young, or change its diving rhythm to breathe.
At all times and regardless of the type of craft, it is prohibited to disturb marine mammals. Disturb means:
- Feed or touch any marine mammal;
- Go into the water to swim or interact with marine mammals;
- Under the water, to play the calls or cries of the whales or create any other noise that resembles them;
- Separate a group of marine mammals or go between an adult and her calf. A calf is a baby whale measuring no more than half the size of an adult.
- Encircle a whale, or a group of whales, between a boat and the coast or between several boats;
- Interrupt, modify or disrupt normal social, swimming, breathing diving, resting, feeding, nursing, reproduction behaviour.