FIELD NOTES – DECEMBER 2023
December 23, 2023
Aerial Survey
After battling tricky weather for the last couple of weeks, we finally caught a break and were able to get off the ground to survey southeast of Nantucket last Saturday. This area is beyond where we normally cover during our typical surveys, but we were following up on a sighting of 11 individual right whales that another aerial team had seen in that area 2 weeks prior. Given the amount of time that had passed and the couple of severe storms that had blown through the area, we were unsure whether or not the whales would have stuck around, but we were eager to find out!
We took off just before 9:30 and had a longer transit than usual to get to our first trackline. Conditions were favorable, with low winds, clear weather, and minimal glare. Shortly after starting our second trackline, Amy called to break on a couple of blows that she spotted 3 miles away – on our next line! Given that animals can go on longer dives in the area we were surveying, we wanted to confirm species immediately rather than waiting to potentially see them on our next line. As we travelled the 3 miles to where Amy had seen the blows, it was hard not to get our hopes up that the blows were coming from right whales; we were all itching to see the first right whales of the CCS season!
It only took a couple of circles in the area to spot two right whales at the surface. The 2024 CCS right whale season had officially begun! The excitement in the plane was palpable as Amy worked to capture photos of the two individuals. They lifted their flukes to dive, and we widened our circles to wait for another opportunity to photograph them. After a few minutes – a shorter dive time than we would have expected for right whales feeding at depth – we spotted another right whale at the surface. Amy soon confirmed with photos that this was in fact a third individual in the same area as the first two! A few minutes later, we got another opportunity to photograph the first two individuals again. It was hard not to immediately want to know who they were and whether or not they were included in the 11 individuals that the other team had in the same area a couple of weeks ago.
After collecting sufficient photos for identification, we returned to the trackline and resumed our survey. The adrenaline rush of finding right whales and circling took a while to subside, and we hoped we would come across more right whales on our following lines. On our next four lines, we had one humpback but unfortunately no more right whales. That was until the start of our sixth trackline, when Amy spotted one close to the plane, which caught her by surprise. We were able to quickly grab some photos before it dove but decided to stay in the area until it surfaced again to make sure there weren’t any other individuals in the area. Unfortunately, this whale seemed to be on its own, and we resumed our survey once again. Our remaining four tracklines were quiet, aside from one fin whale sighting on our last line.
After reviewing the photos once we were on the ground, we were able to identify the four individuals as #3430 Chianti, 2022CalfOf2360, #4041 Cassiopeia, and #4342, none of which were included in the 11 individuals seen by the other aerial team two weeks prior, despite all the individuals being within a few miles of each other. Additionally, #4041 Cassiopeia was seen off the coast of North Carolina just three weeks prior to us capturing her southeast of Nantucket. I couldn’t help but wonder what drivers were influencing these whales’ movements and feeding patterns, what we would have seen in that area in the two weeks between these sightings if the weather had cooperated, and whether or not we’ll be seeing any of these individuals in the coming months in Cape Cod Bay. It was an exciting end to the calendar year, and an exciting beginning to the 2024 field season.
We are hoping we can catch a few more breaks in weather in the coming weeks to get back into Cape Cod Bay and see what (and who) is waiting for us there.
– Annie
