A Beautiful Story of Collaboration, from the Caribbean to the St. Lawrence

Last week, cashing in on a beautiful calm and sunny day, I set sail off the Gaspé Peninsula to do some photo-ID work for the Mingan Island Cetacean Study (MICS). Between 10 and 12 nautical miles off Rivière-au-Renard, I encountered a group of about fifteen fin whales and a dozen or so humpbacks. Amongst the humpbacks I documented were Gronier and Maki, – which are regulars in the Mingan region but have never been sighted in the Estuary – as well as Calanus. There were also two as-yet unknown mother-calf pairs. In fact, the majority of humpbacks encountered that day appeared to be young and absent from photo-identification catalogues.

What amazing observations and what luck, but should we make of it all? It is possible that the small humpback was mistakenly identified as the calf of La Souffleuse. Unless this calf was weaned in record time, which is not very likely since weaning usually occurs in the fall. As I mentioned in my most recent “Field Notes”, humpback pairs consisting of an adult and a smaller animal can be confusing. It is only by observing the interactions between two animals of different sizes and their behaviour over a sufficiently long period that it can be determined whether or not they form a mother-calf pair.

A special thanks goes to Cathy McClain Bacon and Patrick Bourgeois for this wonderful collaboration that allowed us to follow these whales from the Caribbean to the St. Lawrence.

My photos were taken under permit number QUE-LEP-004-2021.