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| Oct. 26, 2009 |
| Written by office staff | |||
| November 11, 2009 23:09 | |||
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Day 2 of our surveys found us heading back up to where we left whales the previous week. We found whales well earlier than we had the previous week – less than 15 miles from Cape Ann's shores! The first few whales were diving for a long time, but we were able to identify our first two whales within the first two hours of our cruise. Full of hope, we headed up to where we were last week - and found virtually nothing. Right whales will stay in an area only as long as their prey, a kind of plankton called the copepod (pronounced cope-a-pod), allow them to do so. We kept going up Jeffreys Ledge a bit further, and finally found a few animals scattered around. It took us another 45 minutes to get sufficient photos of these animals. But it was here our fortunes turned. We noticed that a there were more spouts a little further up; we moved up to find eight more right whales socializing in area. Then, seeing even more spouts to the northeast, we moved up and found our 'main vein' - between 12-15 right whales all rushing to join in a single social group. Like all whales, right whales are thought to mate in the winter, with a pregnancy of a year allowing a female to give birth the following winter. But right whales are unusual in that they appear to engage in mating behavior year-round. Apparent mating groups are called Surface Active Groups, or SAG's for short (see video). SAGs usually involve one (sometimes two or three in larger groups) and many males which appear to compete for opportunities to mate with the female. Groups involve whales thrashing, rolling, laying their heads and flippers on each other, and can be sighted by what seems to be lots of splashing and lots of assorted whale “parts” that are seen above the surface. They are very dynamic, and often make it hard for us to figure out what is going on! So far this year, we have seen several SAGs on each of our cruises. In all, we believe we had over 30 whales on our cruise today, ranking it with the most right whales we have ever seen on the Ledge in a single day. That's almost 10% of the population! We'll be back out tomorrow to start by surveying a portion of the Ledge we haven't been to yet this year, and then finish back where we had the most whales today. Since our project only allows us to work two days a week, that will be it until next week. But it's certainly exciting to start the right whale survey season off with such high numbers of whales nearby!
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| Last Updated on November 16, 2009 10:33 |