This season, a smaller team of researchers went back at King Edward Point, doing small boat surveys and looking for humpback whales to get UAV images of body condition, track animals via satellite tags and collecting biopsy samples and photo ID. Weather conditions were mixed but the team had lots of whale encounters when they were able to get out on the water.
Overall they had 34 cetacean sightings. Humpback whales were the most common speces, like in 2024. They were sighted on 6 days for a total of 22 sightings of ~62 whales. Three individual southern right whales, including one mother/calf pair, were recorded. There were three sightings of four individual Antarctic blue whales, including a mother/calf pair, and three sightings of four fin whales.
They also had one encounter with about 20-25 Type-B killer whales, including a number of very small calves! The team collected biopsy samples from humpback, southern right whale and blue whales (13 total), UAV images of 29 humpbacks and 27 photo IDs of four species (humpback, blue, killer whale and southern right whale). They have also seen Antarctic blue and southern right whales.
Despite challenging weather conditions, including numerous windy days and large swell conditions, the team recorded 95 different sightings during the last season, with 26 sightings of humpback whales, resulting in a best count of 62 individual whales. There were eight sightings of ten individual southern right whales that included two mother-calf pairs! We had three sightings of seven fin whales, four sightings of four minke whales and three sightings of three Antarctic blue whales. Fluke (or tail) images from 36 individual humpbacks were shared with the international matching project HappyWhale
One southern right whale, named “Disco”, was satellite tagged near the entrance to Ocean Harbor on March 9th and tracked until 31st May 2025. You can see where Disco went here! Disco stayed close to South Georgia throughout the autumn period.
For the first time in the Wild Water Whales project, a match was made between a southern right whale female seen on 5th April with a calf and a previous sighting of the same individual off Bird Island on 22nd June 2020.
The team also collected more samples than in the 2024 season, with 22 humpback whale samples plus seven southern right whale samples. Additionally, we conducted 23 drone flights, collecting valuable photogrammetry images of 32 humpback whales and seven southern right whales.
Big thanks to field team members Dr Amy Kennedy, Dr Joanna Kershaw, Nicolas Lewin, Eva Marie Bonnelycke and Stephanie Martin plus King Edward Point Boating Officers Sally Hesketh and Glyn Miller Jones for all their hard work during the 2025 season.
You can read the full report here.