I had a video camera with me this year while I was in Tonga. Nothing too fancy. A Sony HDR-XR500, with a Light and Motion housing and Fathoms 90-degree wide-angle port that David from Scubacam kindly let me abuse use.
[flv:http://www.tonywublog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/MeiMei.flv 480 270]
I'm in the process of compiling a summary document for all the calfs that we encountered and ID-ed this season...a painstaking process that entails poring over thousands of images and hours of video footage.
Actually, while going through the footage of Mei Mei, I realised that I mis-identified one of our encounters. A couple of days after this video was taken, we had another encounter with a mom and calf. At the time, I ID-ed the calf as Mei Mei.
As it turns out...that encounter was with an entirely different mother and calf...which means I have one more calf to add to my list, bringing the total (for now) to 26 calfs (plus one more that Alexis and Nathalie ID-ed after I left Tonga).
A pleasant surprise, even though it means more work, as I need to amend photo tags, excel records, GPS files...aiyah.
If all goes well (i.e., I don't go stark-raving mad from looking at so many whale photos), I'll post my summary in the next few days.