Our
colleagues with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) have
provisionally identified three additional right whales from our 8 January
sighting at Marineland. We documented all three whales in our area from the Air
Cam in previous seasons, so we can say welcome back!
In
January 2010, we were the first to ever photograph Whale #4040, Chiminea, off Ormond Beach. The whale’s gender and year of birth are unknown.
Whale
#4094 is four-year-old female. We saw her once before in January 2011 off Daytona Beach as a
two-year-old.
We are
the first to document Whale #3860 in the SE US
this season. She is a six-year-old female. We had sightings of
her in 2009, 2010, and 2011. In 2011, we had her on the same day as our
sighting of Whale #4094, but roughly two miles apart.
There are
22 right whales photo-identified in the SE US
to date, including three mother/calf pairs. The most recent mother, Whale
#2645, is one that we saw in February 2005 off St. Augustine Beach.
We’ll keep our eyes peeled in case she brings her current calf to into our area
this season, too!
