It's winter in Virginia and that means whales!
Humpback whales have returned to the coastal waters off Virginia! Three whales were sighted in late December during a coastal marine mammal monitoring survey conducted by HDR, Inc. off Virginia Beach, VA. Two individuals were observed cooperatively feeding, and the third was observed breaching! Photo Identification images were taken of all three individuals and will be sent to colleagues who curate photo identification catalogs for this species. Although this particular survey was focused on bottlenose dolphins, the humpback sightings are great news because we'll be starting a new project conducting surveys for photo identification and biopsy sampling in 2015. A profile on this new project will be posted soon - check the current projects page for more information.
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