Season’s first fluke ID captured – possible new yearling spotted
Fluke ID of the Dockyard yearling captured by Andrew Stevenson.
An update now on yesterday’s fascinating sighting of humpback whales off Dockyard.
It was an opportunity for researcher Andrew Stevenson to capture his first fluke ID of the 2026 season.
Mr. Stevenson told Bermuda Broadcasting yesterday that he initially thought the pod might include a calf swimming alongside its mother and an escort.
However, after observing the whales’ behaviour firsthand and enlarging photos on his computer, Mr. Stevenson says he is now reasonably certain the “calf” was actually a yearling.
In a post on social media, Mr. Stevenson explained: “It acted like a calf, tail lobbing and carrying on, but it was clearly not 12–16 feet long. This whale was around 26 feet. Interestingly, it had scarring on its back and sides indicative of a previous entanglement. The white spots on its back are likely the scars from fishing or cargo nets entangled in its mouth or around its head and dragging over its backs and sides.”
He added that the yearling was likely still with its mother because its health was compromised by the entanglement.
Mr. Stevenson said this is the fourth time a yearling with these kinds of scars has been seen, accompanied by its mother and likely a male escort. However, the yearling is not in Bermuda’s ID catalogue – something he says is not unusual.
“The black and white patterns on a calf do not set in for many months and it’s only been around for a year so not as likely to have been photographed as an older whale might have been,” he explained.
As for the question that struck many curious minds … why were the whales so close to the shore?
Mr. Stevenson said that yearlings are playful, curious, and like to explore – and that the mother might have had difficulty keeping her adventurous youngster under wraps.
He continued: “Humpbacks, especially calves and yearlings, hang out with bottlenose dolphins. There are bottlenose dolphins within Dockyard… Can they smell them? Hear them? Taste them? Was there any connection between these humpbacks and the presence of dolphins. We don’t know precisely how humpbacks assess their environment. Anything is possible.”
Mr. Stevenson also confirmed the whales were not in danger and did not require rescuing, noting that humpbacks do sometimes come into very shallow water, especially in the evening.
Like other whales migrating through the area from their feeding grounds to their breeding grounds in the Caribbean, he said this particular pod was likely heading south to the Silver Bank, the Dominican Republic, or Turks and Caicos.
