April 5, 2017 — On Monday, April 3, the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) right whale aerial survey team spotted a right whale mother and calf pair in the north end of Cape Cod Bay between Race Point and Marshfield. This sighting came just hours after researchers from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center identified a different mother / calf pair observed in the Cape Cod Canal. These are the first sightings of the new calves of the year in Gulf of Maine waters.
The male calf spotted by the CCS team is the offspring of a whale named Pediddle, a whale at least 39 years old that was first identified in 1978 and first seen in Cape Cod Bay in 1979. The new calf is Pediddle’s eighth documented by scientists; her last calf was born in 2009.
“During the sighting the mom was subsurface feeding while the calf was rolling and tail slapping,” said Alison Ogilvie, an aerial observer for the Center’s Right Whale Ecology Program. “Mom and calf looked very healthy considering they’ve just completed a more than 800 mile migration from the calving grounds off Georgia and Florida.”
The aerial survey team also observed and photographed 71 other individual right whales in Cape Cod Bay on Monday, the most seen so far this season.