{"id":946505,"date":"2026-10-30T15:10:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T15:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/946505\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T15:10:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T15:10:23","slug":"tongan-whale-watcher-operators-accuse-foreign-businesses-of-rule-breaking-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/946505\/","title":{"rendered":"Tongan whale watcher operators accuse foreign businesses of rule breaking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tonga is one of the few places in the world where tourists can swim with humpback whales bringing in millions of dollars for the island kingdom.<\/p>\n<p>The whale watching industry is booming but local operators accuse some foreign businesses of breaking the rules and getting too close to the animals.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re also worried the government is handing out too many licenses putting the whales and their breeding grounds at risk.<\/p>\n<p>One operator, Alistair Coldrick, is part of a group that has challenged the government in court on the license issue, arguing regulations are not being followed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt says that it should be in the interest and conservation, management or protection of the whales that a license be issued,\u201d he said. \u201cSo clearly throwing more and more licenses out there is gonna apply more and more pressure to the whales.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tonga is one of the few places in the world where tourists can swim with humpback whales bringing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":946506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,3823,3755,128,126604,19930,18204,338],"class_list":["post-946505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-humpback-whales","tag-podcast","tag-science","tag-whale-breeding","tag-whale-watching","tag-whales","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=946505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/946506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}