It’s taken a while (specifically…an estimated 355 hours on/ in the water, plus more than 150 hours to download, tag, sort, look through, and edit photos and notes), but I’ve finally been able to go through all our humpback whale calf images from our 2009 stay in Tonga and compile this summary document.
Summary of humpback whale calfs: 2009, v1 (03 Oct ‘09)
Summary of humpback whale calfs: 2009, v2 (08 Oct ‘09, added two calfs)
Summary of humpback whale calfs: 2009, v3 (28 Oct ‘09, added one calf, whose mother also had a calf in 2008)
Summary of humpback whale calfs: 2009, v4 (06 Nov ‘09, added one calf)
The PDF document is large file (v3: 40 pages, around 12MB), so if you are in a location with limited bandwidth, it may take some time to download.
(In case you’re interested in comparing with the 2008 season, my 2008 summary is here.)
In total, we photo ID-ed 26 calfs in the Vava’u area this year (plus 3 more with the help of other people), compared with 14 in 2008. By all accounts, the 2009 season is a banner year for baby whales in Tonga.
The document is a work-in-progress, as I hope that other people will contribute data to augment the list of calfs that we were able to identify. If you have any images and information about additional ID-able calfs, please let me know.
What I’m looking for is (a) images, dates and locations of sightings of calfs not contained in this document, and (b) additional dates and sightings of calfs that are already in this document.
If you send information, please send low-res jpgs. I will only include additional data if I can verify the relevant calf sighting with photographs. It’s too easy to make mistakes based on memory alone.
I know, because I initially mis-identified Daruma (calf #23/ 2009) as Mei Mei (calf #22/ 2009). When you’re in the water, it’s difficult to be 100% accurate with IDs, so it was only during the photo/ video editing process that I realised my mistake.
For the first time, we carried portable GPS units this season, marking the locations of our calf sightings. Here is a map of our ID-ed calf sightings:
View Calf IDs Tonga 2009 in a larger map
And this is a map of calfs we saw, but were unable to ID:
View Unidentified Calfs Tonga 2009 in a larger map
If all goes well, I’ll put together another document during my 2010 stay in Tonga, which I hope will be another year with lots of baby whales.
Great stuff there Tony.
Am I looking at this correctly ? Did you actually have 24 seperate calf sightings on this trip Tony. That is an amazing number to see if this is correct. I love looking at all of your whale images, cheers for sharing them. All the best. StewSmith
I have just re read your initial posting and it is actually 31 not 24, 24 was the number that were not ID-ed. Amazing.
StewSmith
I loved looking through this, Tony. The images are beautiful, and as I sit at my desk in my windowless office I can’t help but think that your job is much better than mine. That’s a boatload of whales.
[...] results are available as a PDF download. If you’d like to help in this year’s calf survey, please contact Tony [...]
Stew: We ID-ed 26 babies this year, over a period of about 5 weeks. Last year, over a 6-week period, we ID-ed 14.
I’ve received 3 additional IDs so far. I have all the data for one so far, and am waiting for the relevant information for the other two. I will upload a revised file once I have the information.
So that makes at least 29 babies this year. I’m certain there are more.
Heidi: Thank you. Take a break from the office, and come visit the whales some time!
Hi Tony. Your pics are great! I spent three winters in Vava’u getting skin samples of humpback whales for my PhD where I saw lots of whales. However, is a different story watching a fluke or a dorsal fin from above the sea surface compare to what you have here. I suggest you to contact people at University of Auckland that has been doing research there for years. I am sure they will be able to complement the resighting histories of the mothers if you send them fluke photoIDs. Congratulations for the quality of your work. All the best, carlos
Hi Carlos,
Thank you very much. We actually don’t have many fluke photos, as we’ve found concentrating on flukes to be a relatively inefficient way of ID-ing the southern hemisphere humpbacks in Vava’u. Many of them have such distinctive body markings that we have a greater success rate ID-ing with the entire body. And the whales don’t always fluke-up when they dive. In fact, it’s only a minor proportion of the time that they do. With limited time and resources, we concentrate on the methodology that gives us the greatest amount of verifiable data while we’re there.
If we can keep this going for several more years, it’ll be interesting to see what trends develop.
Hope your skin-sample analysis is going well!
[...] http://www.tonywublog.com/20091003/summary-of-humpback-whale-calfs-in-tonga.html [...]
Tony – just sent you a message. I just returned from Mounu and have two more moms and calfs. Loved looking at the photos and reliving our encounters. Look forward to sharing.
ooooiiiii super good foto tony!!! *v* lv lv excellent work! nice doc!!!
I work as a flukematcher for Allied Whale which holds the catalog for whales in the North Atlantic. But there is an effort to gather south pacific humpback flukes for identification since little is known about the health of this population and it maybe hunted once again. Would you be willing to share your fluke photos with Allied Whale? If so I will ask Judy Allen to get in touch with you… she manages the catalog.