The North Atlantic right whale calving ground off the coast of Georgia and northeast Florida was known to fisherman long before researchers discovered it. Historic whaling records show numerous mother and calf pairs hunted in the now critical habitat. In January 1935, local fisherman off the coast of St. Augustine, FL spotted and hunted a mother and calf. After a six-hour stand off, the calf's injuries proved too much and it succumbed to the trauma. The mother managed to elude the whalers, but suffered multiple gunshot wounds (
read more about this story here). Following this event, a moratorium was put on hunting right whales in U.S. waters.
Almost 50 years later in 1984, researchers at the New England Aquarium, with the help of Delta Airlines pilot David Mattingly and a group of volunteer Delta Airlines pilots, decided to fly aerial surveys in this historic habitat. The results were momentous and would change the way coastal waters were used along the eastern U.S. Researchers discovered the only known calving ground for the North Atlantic right whale, later designated one of three critical habitats in U.S. waters.
These southeastern U.S. waters provide a winter habitat for more than just pregnant females; juveniles, non-pregnant females and some adult males are also seen here. The migration is no easy undertaking; these whales must travel over 1,200 miles, evading clusters of fixed and ghost fishing gear while crossing major shipping lanes into Boston, New York, New Jersey and Charleston. Once in the habitat, the threats are not diminished; the ports of Brunswick, St. Mary and Jacksonville are all within the critical habitat.
Birthing females, or cows, give birth to a single calf at a minimum rate of 1 every 3 years, presuming the calf survives long enough to be weaned from the mother. The calving season spans from December through March with a peak in calving events between January and February. Nearly all cows appear to use the calving ground regardless of where they spend their time the rest of the year. Through extensive survey effort, it is known that not all cows bring their calves to the main summer feeding grounds in the Bay of Fundy. Some go to other feeding areas in the Gulf of Maine, Gulf of St. Lawrence, and likely other summer feeding habitats that have yet to be discovered.
Zooplankton productivity in the calving ground is low and right whale's preferred prey species, Calanus finmarchicus, in not available. This means that all right whales in the calving ground, those not nursing milk from their mother, are metabolically converting lipid storages into a useable energy source. Through the cost of lactation and providing enough energy for herself, birthing mothers can lose up to 1/3 of their total body weight during the calf's first year of life.
Nearly all sightings of mother and calf pairs in the calving grounds are in cool water, with temperatures below 20 C, with a few sightings in warmer waters. Temperatures during summer in the Gulf of Maine feeding grounds are 21.8 C, similar to the warmer water sightings in the southeast calving grounds. To many, this suggests an upper thermal limit for right whales. If the prevailing determinant for the selectivity of a calving ground is temperature, then it is possible that rising ocean temperature may cause a shift in the right whale calving ground. Only time, and a watchful eye, will tell.
During the course of our flights this year, we didn't just see right whales.
The North Atlantic right whale calving ground off the coast of Georgia and northeast Florida was known to fisherman long before researchers discovered it. Historic whaling records show numerous mother and calf pairs hunted in the now critical habitat. In January 1935, local fisherman off the coast of St. Augustine, FL spotted and hunted a mother and calf. After a six-hour stand off, the calf's injuries proved too much and it succumbed to the trauma. The mother managed to elude the whalers, but suffered multiple gunshot wounds (read more about this story here). Following this event, a moratorium was put on hunting right whales in U.S. waters.
On a fly day, we get dressed in our flight suits, eat breakfast and pack a lunch in time to leave by 
During our flight, us aerial observers stare out the windows; focusing our eyes just under the horizon and scanning for whales. If we focused on the water closer to us, we would miss things that are farther away. During our flight we try so hard not to take our eyes off the water, it only takes a second to miss a whale! This season we have had some really far sightings (some 6 or 7 miles from our track line) and there have also been times on our survey line that we flew directly over whales. When we think we see a whale, we use our binoculars to verify and then we tell the pilots to either break track left or right, depending on which side of the plane the whale is on. Our primary responsibility is reporting these whales into the Early Warning System so we fly directly over the whales to get an exact position and closer look at each sighting to determine how many whales are there. Sometimes this is easy and in one pass we can determine the number and sometimes it takes a few passes, especially in the case of a Surface Active Group(SAG) where there may be a lot of rolling, and it can be difficult to figure out the exact number of whales right away. Each observer also has secondary roles; the observer on the right side will photograph whales, while the observer on the left side is responsible for taking data on each of the whales sighted. During each sighting this person is responsible for making sure there are no vessels posing an immediate threat to the whales, see Vessels use in the SEUS. Also this person is responsible for calling in our sightings to our ground contact via the satellite phone and also recording data on changing environmental conditions and anything else of interest during the flight.
In order to keep our eyes on the water as much as possible we take a position in the computer which is hooked up to the GPS using a mouse and then use a voice recorder, whose time is synced to the GPS time, to say what that data point is. At lunch we typically will switch seats so that we can face a different direction to stare out at the water (giving our necks a break) and also to share the different roles.
When our flight is over, our day isn't. When we get home we charge the satellite phone and camera battery, download images and review images and translate our voice recordings into our table with the GPS positions. We also write down a detailed summary of our day so that someone could look at the folder for the day and have a full idea of where we flew, what the weather was like, how many whales we saw, etc. We usually don't fully process our images, or do photo-analysis, on the days that we fly, because flying a full survey and processing just our data ends up being quite a full day. We will wait until a day where we are not flying or have a day off. 
In addition to the roles mentioned above, we have one more job role; many times when we are not in the air we are our team's Ground Contact. This person is responsible for knowing where the plane is at all times (we watch the plane on an Automated Flight Following program) and paging out sightings of whales when the plane calls in the sightings to the entire EWS system. The sighting come across on emails, pagers, and cell phones to a wide variety of entities in near-realtime in the following format : "29MAR2009, 11:09(L), 30 47.4N 081 13.6W, 1 ADULT, 1 CALF, HDG N" with the subject line giving relative distance to the nearest sea buoy. 
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Jess and Zach flew today and Kara and I went to meet them at the airport when they landed to refuel to take our annual team photo in front of the plane. Event though we all fly so much, it is very rare for us all to be at the airport at the same time. We made our photo shoot quick so Jess and Zach could get back in the air and find some whales. So far they have had 11 whale, including 3 mother and calf pairs. We are happy that we are still finding whales when we fly; but, there is only a few weeks left before we all head back north and none of us like the idea of leaving with the notion that there are still whales in the area.
