Our colleagues at the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) in Provincetown, MA, have been very busy in the last few weeks as their annual spring right whale surveys continue in and around Cape Cod Bay. In recent days CCS has reported seeing as many as 100 right whales in the Bay! Most of the whales are feeding at or just below the surface on the high concentrations of zooplankton. If you live in the area you might want to get out to one of the Cape or south shore beaches with a pair of binoculars and start looking--you might be lucky enough to see one of the rarest whales in the world!

Two right whales skim feed near Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown. Photo: Marilyn Marx/NEAq

In among those many whales CCS confirmed the first northern sighting of a 2014 mother/calf pair: Couplet (Catalog #2123) and calf!! They successfully made the long and perilous journey up the busy east coast from the calving ground off Florida and Georgia. Couplet was born in 1991 to Sonnet (Catalog #1123) and has had four previous calves. We hope the pair are soon joined in Cape Cod Bay by the rest of this year's mothers and calves--we always breathe a little easier when they've all returned to the feeding grounds!

Couplet  in the waters off Florida in 2003 with her second calf.   Photo: Monica Zani/NEAq

Learn more about right whales!

• Get an update on the babies born this year
• See how the whales are feeding in Cape Cod Bay
• Learn about threats facing right whales in the wild
• Check out this video of disentanglement efforts

Want to help this critically endangered species? Sponsor a right whale today! Your support goes directly to the Aquarium's research and conservation efforts.

-Marilyn

Watch researchers as they photograph a mother with her calf. Listen to hear the whale watcher, Monica, inform the photographers, Dan and Cyndi, of the different body parts that need to be photographed.
*video taken by Jonathan

Jonathan

The recent north winds blew out the fog and then calmed down nicely this morning, giving us our first good weather window in two weeks. Excited to be out on the water again, we awoke at 4:15 this morning to check the weather, put on lots of layers, ate breakfast and loaded the boat with equipment. By 5:30 we were off the dock and headed out to find the whales!

We went to the eastern part of the Bay as we had heard that whales were recently seen there. After a few hours of surveying we found our first whale and quickly began to see others. As we photographed each whale, we would head over to photograph the next one that surfaced and soon found ourselves so far east that we were sitting in the middle of the outbound shipping lane! Keeping a keen eye out for ships (although we didn't see any all day) so we could be quick to move out of their way, we photographed four mother and calf pairs and six other individuals. Four of these individuals were involved in a surface active group (SAG). See SAG video here and here.

We photographed the whales as they energetically rolled and twisted around each other. The female in the SAG was a well known whale named Morse (go to the right whale catalog and search for #1608). Morse was born in 1986 and was given her name because a few white scars on her head reminded researchers of Morse code. After a good day with the whales, it will be a quite night at the Whale House as we all head to bed early in hopes that we will be woken by a subtle knock and the words "we're good to go."



We were able to get out on the water today for a brief window. Here is some footage of researchers Yan, Dan, Cyndi, Monica and Erin Burke (Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries) hard at work documenting a mother and calf pair. The mom's name is Arpeggio (go to the right whale catalog and search for #2753). Listen and look closely and you will hear the sounds of camera shutters clicking as researcher describe the scene and see the distinctive propeller scar on the right flank of Arpeggio.Photo of Morse (EG #1608) taken by Erin Burke.
Video of Arpeggio (EG #2753) and her calf taken by Jonathan Cunha.

- Cyndi/Jonathan

This morning was another quiet one as the fog rolled in from the Bay of Fundy to form a solid gray blanket over the town of Lubec, Maine. This kind of weather sure makes getting up at 5:00 a.m. difficult, but with two days on land we were all itching to get back to sea. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate, so again we find ourselves on land.

Photograph taken by Jessica Taylor of Resolution swimming next to his mother (Catspaw) moments after the birthing event on New Years Day, 2005.

However, the days on land give us the opportunity to get to work on processing all the data we've collected. From the two and a half days we've worked in the Bay of Fundy we already have over 1300 photographs of right whales to process! The processing will take many hours because each image can hold a wealth of information and must be carefully reviewed for its content. Not only can we discover the whale's individual identification from a photograph, but also it's behavior, association with other whales, the overall body condition, the presence of new scars or wounds from human impact and much, much more. As our blog continues we hope to touch upon some of these topics in greater detail, so please stay tuned!

As we begin to process images we start to recognize or identify more and more whales. While working out on the water we often get just a few quick glimpses of a whale before it dives, so although some whales are recognized on the spot others may not be identified until the data processing phase begins. However, whether it happens on the boat or days later when looking at an image on a computer screen, it's always exciting when we identify a whale. It's often like bumping into an old friend on the street or in the grocery store.

Seeing a particular individual often conjures up memories. For instance, seeing a whale might make me remember the first time I photographed a right whale, or my first day working in the Bay of Fundy. I can remember the whale I first identified from the air (while conducting aerial surveys for right whales in their winter calving ground of the southeastern U.S.) and I can remember the first whale I matched to the North Atlantic Right Whale Catalog. So when I heard that the right whale named "Resolution" was photographed on our first day working in the Bay of Fundy this summer (August 6th), I was very excited. Why am I so excited about Resolution? Because I saw him being born! Not only that, but it was the first documented North Atlantic right whale birth!


Resolution in the Bay of Fundy on August 6, 2008. Photo taken from the research vessel Nereid by Jonathan Cunha.

Resolution (#3532) was born off the coast of Florida on January 1, 2005. On that New Year's Day morning over three years ago, I was an observer aboard a New England Aquarium aerial survey plane (from December through March we conduct aerial surveys for right whales on the calving ground off the southeast U.S.). When we first sighted his mom, Catspaw (#1632), thrashing at the surface of the water with a large amount of blood surrounding her, we thought she was badly injured. I had no idea I was about to be part of a team who would be the first and only four people to document a right whale birth! It took us a few minutes to realize what we were seeing...truth be told it was not until the small calf appeared at the surface that we realized what had just happened. Catspaw lifted the small calf to the surface with her body and soon the pair began to swim side-by-side and the remaining blood in the water dissipated. If we had arrived on the scene moments later we never would have known what had just occurred. And in case you haven't guessed it yet, he was named for a New Year's resolution.

It's exciting to know that both Resolution and Catspaw, are in the Bay of Fundy this summer, and that Catspaw is a mom again this year (healthy right whales can have a single calf every three years). Unfortunately, I was not on the water on the 6th of August (the team's first day on the water) so I missed seeing Resolution in person. But just hearing that he is in the Bay of Fundy makes me even more eager to get back out on the water so I can see him for myself!


-Monica

Hi all. It is August 1st, the time of year when right whale researchers at the New England Aquarium and other organizations gather in Lubec, Maine for an annual field season. It's our 29th year in a row! We are about to head out to the Bay of Fundy on our research vessel Nereid in hopes of finding right whales. Earlier this week, there were reports of as many as 20 right whales in the Bay of Fundy already, including several mother calf pairs that have migrated over 1,500 miles to get here from the calving grounds off Florida! Record numbers of right whales were reported on the calving grounds in the Southeastern United States this past winter and on the feeding grounds in Cape Cod Bay this spring. We are hoping for record numbers of whales into the summer months in the Bay of Fundy.

The weather today is not conducive for surveying. We woke up at 5 a.m. to check the weather conditions and saw there was rain and fog in our survey area. We looked at the weather radar and it appeared that the rain was moving to the northeast of us. We were optimistically hoping that the rain would pass allowing the sun to shine through the clouds and burn away the fog making it a beautiful day for surveying. We checked the weather again at 6:15 a.m., but no such luck. It was still raining. We are all keeping our fingers crossed for tomorrow!

We will be here until October so stay tuned for photos of who was sighted and stories from other right whale researchers about their days spent in the Bay of Fundy.

From the field,
Jonathan