April 1, 2024
Aerial Survey
We took off from Provincetown airport at 8am 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
