Candle #0002 identified in Samana Bay yesterday, 18th January 2023 by Eva Reznickova
Royal Gazette Bermuda article referring to our abundance analysis published in Frontiers in Marine Scient. Authors hope research encourages whales’ safety - The Royal Gazette | Bermuda News, Business, Sports, Events, & Community |
Tom Grove’s paper “Reconstructing abundance trends of humpback whales at an oceanic migratory stopover” is published in Frontiers in Marine Science Reconstructing abundance trends of humpback whales at an oceanic migratory stopover
January 5th more humpback sightings off South Shore.
2023 01 03 Encountered two separate pods of Cuvier beaked whales and a pod of dolphins and another manta ray the day after our hour-long encounter although the second one wasn’t as big and did not hang around our boat. Our first ID of the season, #4800 an all black T5 with only one small marking to help identify it.
2023 01 02 Found three separate groups of humpbacks 5-7 miles offshore. We also had a remarkable encounter with an oceanic manta ray some 15 feet across. It hung around Magical Whale for over an hour before we finally left it. Elsa and Somers and I swam with it for an hour with the ray touching us numerous times. Two very large remora attached. Drone and boatside footage.
2022 12 31 humpback sightings off South Shore
2022 12 20 humpback sightings off South Shore
2022 12 8 December. A lobster fisherman spotted a humpback breaching off Southampton on December 8th 2022, another whale passing Bermuda by on his/her way south.
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On 7th April 2018 I encountered a humpback ten miles off Bermuda, surfacing every few minutes. It didn’t seem to be moving anywhere and wasn’t fluking. I got the drone up and saw that something was wrong. The whale was moving only by paddling with its pectoral fins and seemed unable to move its fluke in any way. It was very nervous and avoided us, despite our efforts to very slowly maneuver close enough to see if there was anything we could do. Three days later the same whale was photographed by Jen Simmons, and it was by then covered in sea lice, an indication that it would not survive. There was no evidence of entanglement on the fluke and the injury must have been recent because there were no sea lice on its body when we first encountered it. I’m guessing it must have been injured very recently, perhaps after being impacted by a boat. The story is similar to the poor humpback with a broken back, probably incurred from a boat strike, that managed to migrate from British Columbia to Hawaii using its pectoral fins.
A visiting birder spotted the first humpback whale off Coopers Island on 22nd November 2022, the first humpback sighting of the 2023 season. This will be a whale migrating south to the Caribbean breeding grounds from its northern feeding grounds. No fluke IDs unfortunately. Photo credits Friedman Arndt. I have been out on the water twice since then and have not spotted any humpbacks.
