For the past several years, my friend Takaji and I have been counting humpback calfs during our stays in Tonga.
In the process of doing this, I noticed that there is a wide range of views on how many calfs there are in a given season, with many of the most experienced residents of Tonga believing there are only around six to eight calfs born in/ visiting Vava’u each year.
From direct observation, we know that there are many more calfs, even in seasons that we feel are “below average”. To support this view, we decided to be more methodical this year and put together a PDF file with a few photos and brief descriptions of the 16 calfs we identified over a period of six weeks this season.
Please note that I put this file together as a quick-and-dirty exercise. I’m not a graphic designer, and I didn’t spend any significant time cleaning up the images.
To the extent that it might be possible to draw inferences from our observations, I included a few key observations on page two of the summary.
The file has a lot of photos embedded in it, so it’s a large file, about 7.8MB. Click here to download.
This is an interview that appeared in DIVE Magazine in the UK recently. The main topic is an encounter I had with a juvenile 
I’m back. Physically at least. Since getting off the plane late Saturday night, I’ve been buried under a mountain of emails, phone calls, to-do list items, dog walks, etc. It’s always like this, but sometimes I wonder whether it’s worth re-entering the real world. And it doesn’t really help when I get emails from PNG saying “The waters are frickin’ amazing now. You should’ve stayed longer!” Sigh.
