Just as we were leaving Ely's Harbour on Dom Perignon with Bob Steinhoff, Liz Lusher, Camilla, Ron Lucas and myself we received a phone call from Barbara Fullerton with a sighting of humpbacks off Warwick Long Bay. We were there twenty minutes later and spotted the whales immediately in about 60 feet of water. There seemed to be a younger yearling with its mother and two other whales within a mile or so but in opposite directions. There was some lobtailing activity by a larger and smaller whale and also some breaches. We saw more whales a couple of miles to the east on South Shore and then later two or three whales in the shallows near Sally Tuckers. Winston Godwin, a lifeguard on Horseshoe Beach reported whales yesterday. Could these be the same whales? He indicated a mother and calf with one or two other whales. We obtained four fluke ids today, one of which is below.

Later that day at the Bermuda College, screening "Where the Whales Sing" to a packed audience of 240, I showed some of the photos from today. Camilla Stringer immediately recognised this one as our 0270, photographed on 2009 04 19 and already matched to NAHWC#5638 first photgraphed in 1989 in the Dominican Republic. This was the smaller of the two whales. 

This is the larger whale that was beside the whale we fluke id'ed above. Although we didn't get her (its) fluke id, we did get good photos of the distinctive dorsal fin and this might help identify the pair in the future. You can see how this whale is very thin after presumably coming up from the Caribbean where it hasn't fed for some months.