Hello there! After a rough week of stormy seas and torrential (and somewhat mysterious!) ‘black rain’ brought by the Kusi monsoon winds, Friday left us with something to celebrate… well, a pair of somethings actually.

Monday was a training day for us, teaching our new researchers how to identify different turtle species, dolphin species and their larger cousins the humpback whales. Tuesday was… a total wash out! Torrential rain kept our research boat and research team firmly moored at Mkwiro. Wednesday and Thursday saw us out on the choppy water but the winds kept us confined to the Wasini channel. A brief sighting of a green turtle and bottlenose dolphin were all we got for our efforts and in rough seas following the dolphin sighting and undertaking photo identification surveys proved too difficult.

Friday was looking to be a similar story as the planned survey route to Funzi bay was abandoned and we turned back in to the Wasini channel, however it turned out that we didn’t need to venture as far as Funzi bay… we barely needed to venture off our base in Mkwiro village as it happened. On re-entering the eastern end of Wasini channel the research team were confronted by two seasonal visitors in front of Mkwiro… a pair of humpback whales! We’re not sure that this particular pair was a mother and calf, although one was smaller, it certainly wasn’t a new born and as this marks the beginning of Kenya’s 2009 humpback whale season, we’re expecting mothers to be on their migration north up the East African coastline before they calve.

However it is very exciting for us to see the humpback whales (the fourth largest animal in the world as I learned recently!) return and for those of us here last year, the significance of last Friday, 3rd July, wasn’t lost on us. Last year, the first sighting of humpback whales in the area relayed to us, was on 3rd July! We can’t wait to find out what else we can learn from them over the coming months and if we’re lucky we may have a chance of finding out if any of the individuals we photographed last year have returned for 2009.

 Stay tuned, we’ll be blogging our way through the 2009 humpback whale season for you!

Corti