Wednesday, February 19:

Once I was back on the Barber, we began surveying.  It wasn’t too long before I saw some splashes and a large black body: a right whale in the distance!  When we arrived, we found #2503 (Boomerang) and her calf.  The calf was surfacing several times before mom came up, making it difficult to predict when and where she would surface for a good tagging attempt.  After working with her for a while, we decided to give everyone involved (including the whale) a break for lunch.

Fortunately, she had settled down a bit for the afternoon, and we were able to get a tag on.  Over the course of the day, the calf treated us to two curious approaches, including one toward the end of the tag deployment where it splashed a bunch of water into the boat after surfacing very close to our starboard side.  The calf then surfaced with its mom some ways away, and the tag had just come off.  Hopefully it recorded something from the curious approach! 

–Jess McCordic