April 1, 2024
Aerial Survey
We took off from Provincetown airport at 8 am and headed north to the New Hampshire border to conduct a survey of Massachusetts Bay. Our most recent flights in Cape Cod Bay have shown lower numbers of right whales, so we were eager to see who and what we would find a little further north.
The northern half of Mass Bay was pretty quiet, but we spotted our first right whale on track right in the center of Massachusetts Bay. Unfortunately, it was at the western end of our track line in Logan’s airspace, so we were unable to circle for photographs. This whale will have to remain a mystery! We continued south and picked up a few more individuals that were mostly subsurface feeding. Interestingly, most of our sightings seemed to be along a similar longitude, which made us wonder what the prey resource was doing to make that happen. Along this longitude, we also had a SAG of three whales: Casper (#4140), Rhino (#2142), and Echo (#2642). We did not see their social behavior last for too long, though, because they broke up and began subsurface feeding.
At the very end of our second-to-last Mass Bay track line, I spotted the head of a right whale skim feeding pretty close to shore. We went over to check it out, and not too long after starting to take photos, I saw a small body pop up right next to the whale – our first mom/calf pair of the season! It was quite an exciting moment in the plane. We had been expecting the moms to show up any day, and had been practicing our identification to make sure we would be able to know who was who in the plane. A quick review of my photos allowed me to recognize the mom as Legato (#1802) who was first seen with her calf in the Southeast US at the end of December 2023.
After finding a few more right whales and a lunge-feeding fin whale on the southern Mass Bay track lines, we continued our survey into Cape Cod Bay. There we found more skim and subsurface feeding right whales, with a humpback whale thrown into the mix as well. The long survey day meant we were only able to fly the first few Cape Cod Bay track lines before returning to Provincetown. We are eagerly awaiting our next flight to see who else is in and around Cape Cod Bay!
– Annie
April 26, 2024
R/V Shearwater
April continued to be a very busy month for all of us in the Right Whale Program, with both cruises and flights increasing in frequency. Our vessel team departed on this beautiful Friday bright and early, expecting to continue to find whales not too far off Provincetown. In recent days, beachgoers as well as CCS team members had been spotting whales off Long Point and Wood End, but as we passed the first green buoy it seemed the whales had moved away from their previous feeding spots. It didn’t take us too long to locate them, though, as we found our first group of feeding whales within half an hour. All of these feeding whales were skimming, feeding on a huge patch of plankton so thick we could see it from the boat.
A thick patch of plankton visible at the surface of the water column
Eg No 5070 skim feeding on Apr 26th, 2024
This feeding aggregation consisted of 10 whales, including #5104, #5145, #5015, #5070, #5191, all juvenile whales who have recently been given catalog numbers. Also in this group were some additional whales, including the 2022 calf of Archipelago (#3370), and #4102 and #4425.
But these youngsters were just the beginning of our day. After leaving them behind, we came across another group of feeding whales consisting of #4520 and our first mom-calf pair of the day, who turned out to be Wolf (#1703) and her calf. They gave us a few good looks and photos before we decided to move on. We came across another large group of skim feeding whales which included another mom, Butterfly (#1425) and her calf. The calf swam around mom while she munched on copepods and occasionally took a peek at Shearwater as we were stopped to collect some plankton samples. But this calf was not nearly as curious as the next one we found. After this group, we spotted another skimming whale a bit further off, which turned out to be another mom, Legato (#1802). Her calf popped up a little bit away from her as we stopped to photograph, giving us all a bit of a shock when they chose not to swim back to Mom. Instead Legato’s calf poked their head out of the water and cruised up to the side of the boat, curiously approaching to check us out. They swam to Shearwater’s stern before Legato turned around to seemingly retrieve her inquisitive offspring. The calf made their way back away from our boat and returned to Legato’s side, the two swimming off together in search of more food.
2024 Calfof1802 curiously approaches R/V Shearwater during a survey
As we began to wind our way back to Provincetown we photographed another six feeding right whales before locating our last group of the day. These whales were feeding within a few hundred meters of shore right off Wood End. They were ID’ed as Oakley (#3120), #2940, and an unknown juvenile. As we photographed one of the whales though, another calf popped up! This final calf of the day belonged to a mom named Limulus (#2912), who we had yet to see from the boat. After capturing some great images of the group, we waved goodbye and headed back to the dock, grateful to have had such an incredible day on the water.
– Morgan