Museo Nacional de la Ballena

The Museo Nacional de la Ballena, known as MUNBA, is a museum about whales, dolphins and porpoises on Cerro del Vigía, the hill above the south end of Mazatlán's historic center and Olas Altas. It sits inside Observatorio 1873, a tourist park built around one of the city's oldest buildings: a lookout first used in the mid-19th century to watch for hostile ships and pirates, which in 1873 became the Observatorio Mazatlán, recording weather and earthquake data. The park opened to visitors in February 2020, with a funicular up the hill, an agave garden, a manor-house museum, an aviary, an iguana sanctuary, a zip line and a rooftop bar and restaurant with views over the port. MUNBA arrived in 2024 and was officially inaugurated on July 23 of that year.

Inside, three permanent halls tell the story of cetaceans. Maravillas Acuáticas looks at how whales' bodies are adapted to life in the sea; Sociedades Oceánicas covers the social life of dolphins, their survival strategies, intelligence, echolocation and communication; and De vuelta al Mar follows the evolution of whales, dolphins and porpoises from land animals back to the ocean. The exhibits are interactive, with augmented reality, and the museum's centerpiece is its collection of skeletons, among them a large whale skeleton and a dolphin.

The museum also goes to sea. Each winter humpback whales migrate to the warm Pacific waters off Mexico, and in Mazatlán the first ones are usually reported in December, a few kilometers off the coast near the Tres Islas; the 2025 season ran to about mid-April. MUNBA Expeditions, run by the museum's staff together with Onca Exploraciones, takes small groups out in two high-speed inflatable boats for 13 passengers each, with bilingual guides, a talk on whale ecology and a hydrophone to listen to whale song; guests help with the museum's monitoring project by photographing tail flukes and recording songs. Tours include hotel pickup and leave daily in two shifts, from 8:00 and from 12:00.