February 19 – February 26, 2022 

Week Five of our 31st Season

This year Aquatic Adventures embarks on its 31st season of providing our guests the unique opportunity to encounter the North Atlantic humpback whales on their breeding and calving grounds, the Silver Bank. As the season unfolds, we’ll highlight some of the various encounters and experiences of our guests each week. We hope you enjoy following along!

The Big 5

In Africa, the “Big Five” are the lion, leopard, black rhinoceros, Cape buffalo and African bush elephant. More recently a group of photographers and conservationists, through a project called “The New Big Five”, has made their own list: elephant, polar bear, gorilla, lion and tiger. People from all over the world devote much of their lives trying to get pictures of these amazing creatures in their natural environments. Here, on the Silver Bank, we also have our Big 5, but ours relate to the most impressive humpback whale sightings;

There is the Mother and Calf, enjoyed mostly due to the tendency for the mother to rest near the bottom for twenty minutes or so while the calf comes up to breathe every 3 to 5 minutes depending on its age. It is a great opportunity to get up close to a baby humpback whale and observe it while it learns behaviors like opening its mouth, buoyancy control and maneuverability.

The Rowdy Group, always seen from above the surface in the tender, is a high energy exciting group of whales, usually one female and multiple males competing for the chance to mate. During a rowdy group, activities like bubble streams, lunge breaching and chin breaching can be observed. 

The Singer, usually a solitary male close to the bottom vocalizing in the highest and lowest frequencies known in the animal kingdom. The song lasts anywhere from 12 to 20 minutes and is hypothesized to be a way of soliciting females on the mating grounds. Click here for a short video of a singer from our 4th week.

Dancers, what is thought to be a prelude to mating, the whale or whales will twist and turn, spin and spy hop. Sometimes together or solitary. Last week we observed a female dancing while the male rested near the bottom; this week two whales, circling each other closely in an embrace that many guests agreed looked like a hug.  

The Double Breach, whether an adult and calf lob tailing together or two adults flying through the air simultaneously, the double breach is an astonishing sight. The spinning head breach, what the humpback or “acrobat of the sea” is known for, is particularly impressive. It’s even more remarkable if you are lucky enough to have the timing just right to capture a picture of this very quick but monumental activity. 

The Silver Bank’s Big 5: The mother and calf, rowdy group, singer, dancer and double breach. Our guests see plenty of action over the duration of a week on the bank, maybe even all five! 

This week, we came across a few whales with evidence of entanglement scarring. One in particular caught our attention due to a large V-shaped section of her caudal peduncle missing. It was our last day on the Silver Bank in the late afternoon and we came across the mother and calf up in the coral. We quickly noticed the scarring on the mother’s dorsal side as it was so prevalent. Lorenzo, the captain of Challenger, recognized her from years past and once back aboard the Turks & Caicos Explorer II, was able to locate the photos he had taken of her in years prior. As seen in a photo from 2015, she had the same scarring and was also with a calf. Whether this whale had been disentangled by an environmental group or somehow disentangled herself, she is a success story. Not only did we see her this year with a calf, proving that she was healthy enough to mate and calve after being entangled, but the photos from Lorenzo prove she has had at least two calves since the incident. We do not know the ID of this whale but hopefully with the help of Center for Coastal Studies we will be able to shed some light on the history of this whale and contribute to the ongoing effort to increase awareness and protect these majestic mammals. 

The Aquatic Adventures team hopes that you are as inspired as we are to help sustain the humpback whale population. Through our partnership with the Center for Coastal Studies, we are helping to gain critical information on these charismatic creatures, and to seek ways to protect and preserve them. To find out more about this effort, join their mailing list or to make a donation, large or small, please visit: www.coastalstudies.org/aquaticadventures

We are proud to support SeaLegacy in their efforts to create powerful media to change the narrative around our world’s oceans. Their mission is to inspire the global community to protect our oceans. To learn more about SeaLegacy and help with this important mission, please visit: https://www.sealegacy.org

Thanks to all who have generously donated!

Learn more about Aquatic Adventures here.

Written by: Aquatic Adventures team member Gillian Morin
Edited by: Aquatic Adventures team member Heather Reser 
Images:  Aquatic Adventures, Lorenzo Martinez, Kat Zhou, and Greg Garnich