July was a busy month for BMMRO, while Whale Camp was being run in Abaco (to be reported in next month's newsletter), the rest of BMMRO's science team spent the month of July at the Atlantic Undersea Testing and Evaluation Center in Andros, Bahamas, with the goal of tagging beaked whales with suction cup digital acoustic tags. Although due to weather we only got out on the water 3 days in the month, we managed to successfully tag two subadult Blainville's beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris), and collected photo-id data on three additional Blainville's beaked whales.
Below are photos of the tag on the end of the pole used to deploy the tag on the whale, the tag on one of the whales, and our support vessel, Cirdan. Cirdan belongs to Mike Gould who generously donated his time and vessel to help us track the tag through its deployment and aid in the retrieval of both tags, thank you Mike!
We re-sighted an adult female Blainville's beaked whale (below left) that we had seen in Andros in October with a young calf. This time she was also with a young animal (below right), but until the photo-identification analysis is completed, we cannot confirm whether or not this is her calf.
