We can see clearly now the fog is gone!

Fog 2

_{The MICS Team leaving the dock in the fog}

Sure, finding whales in the fog is a nice and unique sensory experience, where you rely more on your sense of hearing that you do on your sense of sight, but it is not as conducive to finding animals.

Fog

_{The MICS boats all leaving the dock and making their way in the fog}

The warm front that brought high temperatures to the North Shore also clashed with the cold waters of the St. Lawrence, condensing into a thick fog that stayed with us for two weeks. Luckily, the weather has changed and the winds shifted, and we are back on our usual survey efforts.

Humpback peduncle

_{Visibility was not as clear as we can sometimes have it, but it has allowed us to spot whales and resume our usual photo-identification efforts.}

Having not found many whales in the eastern part of the Jacques Cartier Passage, we decided to survey the western part by leaving from Rivière-au-Tonnerre (“BBR”). We found minke whales, fin whales and plenty of humpback whales, including: H742-“Chalk", H129-“Whip”, H870, H733-“Casper”, H009-“Fleuret”, H485-“T-Main”, H686, H861, H729, H707-“Calanus”, H698-“Fourmilier”, H838, H590-“Piranha” and H531-LaSouffleuse! So we have a few old-timers and a few irregular individuals.

Our team was treated to a particularly exuberant surface display by H742 “Chalk”, who breached multiple times, spy-hopped and flipper-slapped. And H733-“Casper” lob-tailed and tail-slapped!

breach and boat