Península Valdés

Every winter and spring, endangered southern right whales gather to breed in the sheltered gulfs flanking Península Valdés, a windswept Patagonian promontory hosting one of the world's great marine mammal spectacles. Southern elephant seals and sea lions crowd its beaches — where local orcas have learned to surge deliberately ashore to snatch pups, a hunting technique seen almost nowhere else on Earth. UNESCO recognised the peninsula's global conservation importance with World Heritage inscription in 1999.