Sixteen long, empty, lonely days ... and then
... YAHOO! The phone rang at 08:00 on Wednesday morning, 23 January. Julie Albert
from Marine Resources Council relayed a hotline call from Ken and Lonnie
Merrifield, Canadians from Port Elgin on Lake Huron who are vacationing here
for several months, and who attended Jim's right whale talk at Gamble Rogers
State Park on 12 January.
They picked up the phone card, and knew what to do! Their initial sighting was
from the Ocean Beach Club II in South
Flagler Beach
at 07:50, and we tracked the pair south until 14:30 when they
were off Capistrano
Drive in Ormond Beach. The sea state was
at least 4 and probably 5, but volunteers kept them in sight for 6 1/2 hrs. We
thought we were looking at a mother-calf pair, but, because the
"younger" animal had fully developed callosities, we wondered whether
it was a mother and a yearling.
Conferring with Katie Jackson, our colleague on
the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission team, we were told, in
fact, they were likely both juveniles. The whale with the "broken" callosity
pattern is tentatively identified as Whale #3860, while the whale with the "continuous"
pattern is not identified at present. If confirmed, Whale #3860 is a female
born in 2008. We saw her in the '09 and '10 seasons, and Julie at MRC saw her
in the '11 season off of Indian Harbor Beach
in the Melbourne
area. We are told that both of these individuals are new reports for this
season. Compliments to all for a job well done!
For
more information on callosity patterns and how to identify right whales, visit
the Associated Scientists website, www.aswh.org,
and download the “Volunteer Handbook” toward the bottom of the Home page.
