The past few weeks have been fairly hectic for the MICS team. Many days on the water and a small team have slowed down some of the work on land including updates to the newsletter! Richard Sears, Valentine Ribadeau-Dumas, and Morgane Martin have left for our yearly research expedition to the St. Lawrence estuary to study the Blue Whales...
[If you have not been keeping in touch with the MICS newsletter, please refer to the July 7 entry below regarding Pop-up hydrophones.] On July 26, one of the most bizarre events to have occurred at MICS took place. We received a call from Cornell University announcing that Pop-up #2, the one that we had deployed in Baie-Ste-Marguerite, had been...
The MICS’s Gaspé team, Andrea and Valentine, crossed the St. Lawrence Gulf again after their 3-week research trip. In total, they photo-identified 17 Blue Whales, 21 Humpbacks, and observed Finbacks, Pilot Whales, and White-sided Dolphins. The calm waters of the Baie de Gaspé, combined with the mild weather in the area permitted them to work almost every day. After their...
Andrea Bendlin and Valentine Ribadeau-Dumas, our team in Gaspésie, have extended their stay in Cap-aux-Os. Even after two weeks of intensive fieldwork in the Baie de Gaspé and surrounding areas, there are still many more animals that need to be photo-identified. The Gaspé research area is teeming with marine mammals at this time of the year; Andrea and Valentine have...
The whales have started to arrive in the Jacques-Cartier Strait! We have now photo-identified over 30 Fin Whales in our Mingan research area. Our Finback expert, Julien Delarue, has already matched seven of those to our catalogue. One individual, F071, had last been seen in 1989! Our Fin Whale observations also include three cow-calf pairs. This, in itself, is a...
After several days of searching throughout our study area, the MICS team has finally found the large Fin Whale concentrations characteristic for this time of the year. More than 30 of these big whales were seen this week at the eastern outskirts of our research zone. This finding coincided with the arrival of the veteran of the team, Alain Carpentier....
Our 28th season is already well under way! Four research boats are in the water and the station's interpretation centre has already welcomed over one hundred visitors through our educational programmes. Once again, a group of students from the Pointe-aux-Trembles High School spent a day with the team to learn about the marine mammals of the Gulf of St. Lawrence...
