Weather and whales align
We had been out on the water around Cumberland Bay a few times and seen whales in the distance. And there were several reports of ‘supergroups’ of hundreds of whales north east of South Georgia. So it was exciting to get a good weather window on Saturday morning. The wind had died down, and as we got out of Cumberland Bay it seemed that the swell was not too bad either. Not too long into the morning, we came across several groups of humpback whales.
Good day for data collection
We started off collecting photo-IDs of the whales, and then collected biopsy samples as well. As the morning progressed, the swell continued to ease. This meant we were able to attempt deploying GPS tags. The weather and whales were on our side and we managed to approach a whale hanging out by itself just off Godthul. Amy successfully deployed a tag in just under 3 minutes. We also got 6 biopsy samples that day, each from a different humpback whale, and photo-IDs on many of the whales we saw. We also got another tag out on Tuesday morning – more on that to come!
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