A Right Whale Tale

Each year when we sail down the coast, we hear frequent radio warnings about avoiding right whales. The warnings are so frequent that they have become background noise. About the only good thing is that the Coast Guard doesn’t broadcast the warnings at night so we don’t have to listen to them when doing an overnight passage. No more. From now on, we will listen more attentively.

On December 17th, 2021 we were enroute from the St John’s river (near Jacksonville, FL) to St Augustine, FL – a fairly short day trip. Weather was beautiful. Seas calm with a gentle southeast breeze. About 2 miles offshore and 5 miles south of the St Johns river sea buoy, Lyn saw something. She didn’t yell “thar she blows,” but she could have. Sure enough, a right whale headed north no more than a couple hundred yards farther offshore. Never blew again, but we could clearly see the back of a right whale.

Right whales are endangered with only about 400 left in the world. Hence the Coast Guard warnings about being careful during Right Whale mating and migration season.

We called the Coast Guard to report the sighting and had a fairly lengthy conversation about what we saw, where we were, etc. Then about 30 minutes later, we received a phone call from a researcher at Florida Fisheries. Another lengthy conversation with more detailed questions. At the end, Tom told us that a spotter plane was due to make it’s daily flight looking for whales and they would take a look at where “our” whale would be based on our sighting and guesstimate about course and speed.

That’s what we thought would be the end of our little bit of excitement.

Then about 2 hours later, Tom called back. Our whale was right where we projected but was not alone. Apparently we saw a yearling that was in company with 2 other whales. The spotter plane found them, took some more photos and called to thank us for the report.

Our whale is an as yet un-named calf of a Whale named Binary. It is Binary’s third documented calf.

Tom emailed us these pictures taken by various researchers.

As a cool sidenote, our yearling will be eligible for naming next year. Tom said that he would submit the name “Paperbird” as one of the choices for the researchers to vote on. How cool would that be to have a right whale named after your boat?

But if not…