This morning we had a bumpy trip out to the whales but were able to get some great looks at Fulcrum and her calf! Fulcrum is a whale we have known on Stellwagen since she was calf back in 1997! Fulcrum has a very distinctive dorsal that let's us be able to know her from the surface without seeing her fluke. Fulcrum calf was getting hungry and started to nurse, a very cool thing to see. When a calf starts to nurse they will go down on a dive on one side of their mother and then come back up on the other, and keep switching sides each time. This calf can drink about 100 gallons of milk a day! That way at the end of the first year, it will almost double in it's size!
~ Melissa Rocha, Lead Naturalist

Labels: calf, Fulcrum, mother