Hi from the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary:
Not too much to report this week -- although it seems that calving is proceeding down south, off the Georgia and Florida coasts.
The New England Aquarium's field team reported on Feb. 9th that sightings slowed somewhat during the past two weeks. It seems the whales -- mostly mother/calf pairs -- have moved further south and spread out along the coast of Florida (from Jacksonville Beach to south of Cape Canaveral). Researchers radio-tagged the mother of the most southerly mother-calf pair (this whale, officially known as #1268 has rarely been seen -- she was last sighted in 1986). Tracking flights were to have been flown this past week. Hopefully, I'll have some interesting info for you on this research in next week's report.
The mother-calf pairs spotted have been demonstrating the following behaviors: calf nursing calf lobtailing mother breaching lots of body contact
In last week's report I asked if you knew where right whales went in the winter. Well, there is no perfect answer since we really don't know. We have seen pregnant females and mother- calf pairs off the Georgia and Florida coasts. But we don't know exactly where the males, juveniles of both sexes, and non-pregnant females go. Perhaps they're just off-shore in northern climes, perhaps they accompany the pregnant females and stay off-shore of southern areas. Occasionally a whale (or several) will be spotted off Nantucket in the winter (last week's report had sightings off Nantucket, Chatham Harbor on Cape Cod, and in Cape Cod Bay). Whether these are just stragglers or an indication of a larger population is not known.
The story of the right whale that went up the Delaware River (mentioned in last week's report) has some additional interesting information attached to it. It seems "Shackleton" the whale had first been seen as a young calf off the Georgia coast in Jan. 1994. He and his mother traveled to Florida in Feb. 1994 before making the long trek to Cape Cod Bay where they were spotted in March and April. They were again seen in the Bay of Fundy in August. His mother, named "Wart," had been satellite-tagged in 1990 with her previous calf. During a six-week tracking period in 1990, Wart and her calf went from the Bay of Fundy south to the New Jersey coast (almost to the Delaware Bay!) and then back to the Bay (a round trip of 2,356 miles). You might say -- that's one awesome road trip. It seems that, for Wart, the Delaware Bay is some sort of milepost. Perhaps, she left Shackleton there on his own and he just got a bit confused. After all, he wasn't even a year old, and had only made the migration north once. Hopefully, now he knows how to get south in the winter and will make the trek north this spring.
Right whales (as demonstrated by Wart), calve once every 3-5 years. Humpbacks calve every two years on average. Might this be a factor in the right whale's seemingly poor population recovery rate? How often do gray whales calve?
Here's hoping for some exciting right whale sightings. Til next week -- this is Anne Smrcina, Education Coordinator, SBNMS.