Friday, October 09, 2009

A great day with Siphon & her baby girl, Inlet and Quarternote and some LARGE fin whales!

Hello everyone,

We had another great fall day on the water with fin whales and humpbacks on both our morning charter and our 2:00 pm whale watch.

On both trips we spent time with 3 large fin whales not too far from Whitehorse Island, in the protected waters of the inshore area. After spending some time with the finbacks John decided to run us offshore and search for humpbacks on both trips, the weather was a little breezy in the afternoon but nothing too bad to keep us in the islands.

On our morning trip we made our way to the Wolves Bank and we found 3 humpbacks who we quickly ID'ed as Quarternote and Siphon and her 2009 calf. We also saw these 3 on our 2:00 pm departure further east behind the Wolves.

Below are some photos from today of Siphon and her baby girl...

This is Siphon, first documented in the early 1990's and this is her 6th known calf.


This is the 2009 calf, a female, of Siphon and she is amazing to watch. She often does "headstands", raising her tail...and half her body...out of the water.


Mom and calf traveling together


This is Quarternote, a male and the 2001 calf of Buckshot.


On our way out to search for humpbacks on our afternoon trip we stopped with a finback not too far off the bank and then a humpback popped up not far off the boat and it turned out to be Inlet. Inlet is a young whale who we first photographed as an unknown last season and was just named last spring. Today we noticed some new scars, most likely from an entanglement, on Inlet that were not there when we last recorded him on September 24th. Entanglements in fishing gear is one of the greatest threats that face whales today.


Thanks for checking in today!! It was an awesome day!

Cheers,
Danielle

PS the photo below...from left to right is Quarternote, Siphon and her 2009 calf.

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