08/12/2023 – 17:43
A humpback whale was spotted placing a calf on its head and taking it for a quick walk on the surface of the sea, this week, off the coast of Ilhabela, on the north coast of the State of São Paulo. The unusual record was made by environmentalist Júlio Cardoso, coordinator of the Baleia à Vista Project, which monitors the passage of whales and dolphins along the coast of São Paulo.
According to him, the mother, an adult humpback, about 15 meters long, was helping the very young calf to breathe. “She settles the pup on her head and takes it for a quick walk. As the young have to breathe more frequently and are not yet able to make great dives, the mothers often keep them that way, on the surface, so that they breathe more easily. It’s like a mother cradling her baby in her lap”, he compared.
Cardoso calculated that the baby had a maximum of two weeks to live and measured about 4 meters. In other images, he caught the little whale taking its first leaps, still shy, always very close to its mother.
“This season, we have seen many mothers with young, which is a great sign for the conservation of the species. As they cannot swim very deep, the mothers stay with them at the surface, which also facilitates sightings,” she said.
The humpback whale sighting season off the north coast of São Paulo runs from late May to early September, when cetaceans migrate from the southern hemisphere to warmer waters off the Brazilian coast for reproduction. This year’s is already an absolute record in sightings, according to data from the Baleia à Vista project. 707 humpback whales were sighted, a number 431% higher than in the 2022 season, when 164 were seen. The previous year, there were 201.
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