Happywhale

Date: 11/2/2021

Hours: 1

Event: Tracking Homer whales on Happywhale

This week, Olga sent us a text that one of our whales was sighted moving from Homer to Kodiak Island. I looked more into it and found that it has been seen twice in Homer on October 4th, 2015, and again on October 9th, 2015. Then it hasn't been seen until November 5th, 2021. It was cool to see the people who contributed to taking photos of it and it's very cool to me how Happywhale is able to bring researchers together to help understand where these whales are going.

The whale Olga sent us from Happywhale.

I did some more research to see what other whales I could find around Homer. It was interesting because I found some resident killer whales that have been sighted near Homer. Once of the killer whales has an ID of AP11 and was first sighted in 2017 and 5 more times with the most recent being 7/21/21. It has always been sighted in Alaska near Homer which makes sense. In fact, Emma Luck photographed it and added some images to Happywhale. This makes me wonder if we saw this whale when going out on field trips.

In addition, I didn't realize that Happywhale documented whales other than humpbacks. I think Happywhale is a good website to work with because it can help us understand where Homer whales are going to, as well as help us see if we are continuing to see them every year. There was even a beluga sighted in Turnagain Arm this year on August 21st. It reminds me of how we also saw belugas on our field trip up to Anchorage. It was also interesting to see that a lot of the humpbacks from Homer were sighted again in Canadian waters along the coast. In fact, there are lots of whales that have been sighted in those waters. Overall, I think Happywhale is a good resource and that we should start sending all of our whale sightings there.