#8: The 2012 Calf of #3390 puts on a show!

As Amy mentioned in the previous post, we've finally had a great stretch of weather to get on the water- today marks the fourth consecutive day for the Nereid team! Although we haven't been seeing dozens of right whales in the Bay, it seems promising that more will continue to arrive. We were very excited to have our first mom (Catalog #3390) and calf pair for the season. This is one of only seven documented calves born this year. The pair was last seen in Florida in March, so they've come a long way!

Mom (#3390) with her calf. Photo: Maria Hall

This calf was a joy to observe, as it pulled out all the tricks in the book- lobtailing, breaching, flipper slapping and rolling! What made it even more entertaining to watch was that he didn't quite have the hang of these behaviors yet. Most of the times he breached he landed on his back, but some breaches ended with a big belly-flop. His flipper slapping yielded some loud smacks on the surface of the water, but this calf also ended up just waving at the team and hitting his own body a few times. We were able to capture some of these behaviors on film! Enjoy!

-Marianna