Estuary 2007 This year's Estuary trip turned out to be shorter than usual but yielded valuable information about the Blue Whales that visit that part of the St. Lawrence. Richard Sears, Valentine Ribadeau Dumas, Sophie Comptois, and Sophie Bédel spent two weeks based out of Forestville to study behaviour and photo-identify a total of 15 Blue Whales. The trip was...
2007: a record-breaking year! The 2007 season has been particularly frustrating for MICS team members. Wind, rain, and fog have prevented us from going on the water on several occasions. Even more frustrating is the fact that this season may turn out to be a record-breaker with regard to the number of different individuals photo-identified as well as the number...
Splish H002 On September 16th 1980, two MICS boats went out to sea for a day of research. The logbook describes a sunny day with calm seas. The boats scanned along the North Shore to the village of Magpie finding Fin Whales, White-sided Dolphins, and Grey Seals before heading to PWA (West Point of Anticosti, for us!). That’s when they...
This week brought optimism to the team. Weather conditions finally allowed us to send boats to the western edge of our research area where several Fin and Humpback Whales were photo-identified. Some of the individuals observed had been part of the aggregations present at the beginning of the month while others represent new sightings for the season. One of these...
Strong winds and rain have prevented us from going on the water very often over the past two weeks. In our last newsletter, we reported an unusually high number of Humpback and Fin Whales very early in the season including several cow-calf pairs. The observation peak for these species occurred on July 9th and was estimated at 45 finbacks and...
Fast swimmers! How long do you think it takes for a Humpback Whale to cross the Gulf of St. Lawrence? This week, Valentine and Petra, our Gaspé team, saw two well-known humpbacks off Cap Gaspé. Splish (H002) and Tingley (H277) are regular visitors to our Mingan-Anticosti research area and are often seen along the Gaspé coast early in the season. News of...
Gaspé trip Our annual research expedition to Gaspésie started today. Team members Valentine Ribadeau Dumas and Petra Reimann crossed the Gulf of St. Lawrence to work on the Blue and Humpback Whales that stopover near the tip of the Gaspé peninsula to feed before moving on. Past expeditions in Gaspésie have resulted in interesting data as to the movements of large...
A Blue Whale calf in the Gulf of St. Lawrence 2007 started off with a promising observation in Gaspé. In the beginning of May, the Croisieres de la Baie de Gaspé team notified us of a Blue Whale cow-calf pair seen in the area. This is only the 17th time a Blue Whale calf has been observed and photographed in the...
Loreto February/March 2006 March 19th we arrived to a warm afternoon and the beginning of our 24th Loreto field season. A few more streets paved, a new house going up here and there, but for the most part everything was as it had been. The turkey vultures up in the palms not too far from the shore in their nighttime...
During an aerial survey over waters in the Sept-Iles/Port Cartier on Friday February 2, a MICS team member accompanied by a collaborator from Gallix, observed at least a thousand harp seals (Pagophilus groenlandicus) distributed in groups of 50-200 on ice floes off Sept-Iles. There was 9/10s ice coverage with open leads here and there. And in a small area of...
