Endangered right whale and her calf surprise SC fishermen, leaving them all in awe
Brian Hawkins surveyed the sky, then the sea, and for a moment all was calm.
The waters before him that morning looked like dark, smooth glass. The sky above resembled a canvas painted with soft strokes of light purple that slowly faded into periwinkle blue as it kissed the clouds.
Sitting in a boat about 6 miles offshore from South Carolina’s Folly Beach, Hawkins cut the engine so he could hear every splash as he watched birds dive into the water for food. He had hoped that these feathered hunters would lead him and his fellow fishermen to huge red drum or redfish.
Instead, on Monday morning, the birds led Hawkins and his fellow charter boat fishing captains to a precious, unforgettable encounter when a critically endangered North Atlantic right whale named Slalom suddenly surfaced between their two boats with her calf.
Hawkins grabbed his cellphone and began recording what he saw, sharing this intimate sighting of a right whale with her calf live on Facebook.
Watching the whales with him in the boat, captain William McKenzie of Tight Line Outfitters struggled to find the words.
“I can’t — this is amazing,” McKenzie said in disbelief, as Slalom rested on top of the water, a behavior called “logging,” with her calf.
“Look at that,” Hawkins marveled, his voice low and clear in the video.
Hawkins has more than 25 years of experience fishing and exploring in these South Carolina waters near Charleston and is the owner and captain of Hawkins Fishing Charters on Folly Beach. He has spotted right whales before, but it was always at a distance and always just a single whale.
This time, the mother and calf were so close to Hawkins that his cellphone’s microphone picked up the sound of them breathing in the water.
“We won the lottery,” Hawkins said in an interview with The State newspaper. “They say there are only 336 of these whales left in the world, and I still can’t believe one of them popped up within 50 yards of my boat.”
Such a close encounter with a right whale is virtually unheard of, according to Melanie White, a research biologist and the North Atlantic Right Whale Conservation Project Manager at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute in Florida.
“That’s goosebumps status right there,” White said of Hawkins’ experience.
It’s even more incredible given how few right whales are left.
Over the past decade, the right whale population has seen its numbers drop from about 480 in 2010 to fewer than 350 today, as many of these creatures succumb to man-made threats like entanglements, boat strikes and climate change, which is warming the waters of their ocean home, disrupting their reproduction patterns and making their food harder to find.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now estimates that fewer than 100 adult females, like Slalom, remain.
“If nothing changes within a few decades, they could actually be moving towards functional extinction. It’s very serious,” said Clay George, a wildlife biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources who spearheads right whale conservation efforts.
Each discovery of a right whale and each subsequent sighting are recorded in the New England Aquarium’s Right Whale Catalog. The entries detail the stories of each whale, like Slalom, including identifying marks, their lineage, whether they’ve had calves of their own and what they’ve survived.
“But they’ve been dying at such a fast rate in recent years that it’s just not really a given anymore that we can expect them to each come back,” George said of the right whales. “We’re losing about 30 a year on average.”
If only more right whales could be like Slalom.
At 13, she survived her first fishing net entanglement. Now almost 40, she has lived through at least six other entanglements.
She’s also been diligent in trying to repopulate her species. The calf she was spotted with off of Folly Beach is the sixth she’s known to have given birth to in her lifetime.
One of her most famous calves, Mogul, swam to Iceland one year. The next year, he swam to France and Newfoundland.
Slalom also had at least four grand-offspring from her daughter, Insignia, but two of the four likely died within their first year or two of life.
Her grandson, Junction, has two sets of propeller wounds on his back — a visible reminder of how man threatens the continued existence of the North Atlantic right whales.
“Slalom and her family are poster children for the issues that right whales face, but sadly, every family has such stories of harm done at the hands of humans,” Philip Hamilton, a senior scientist for the New England Aquarium, said in a statement earlier this month.
Right whales head south for the winter for calving season, migrating from New England beginning in mid-November and traveling along the Southeastern coast to give birth in warmer waters.
They returnnorth in mid-April, headed for waters off the coast of New England and Canada, where they will feed and mate.
It is a journey Slalom has made many times in her life.
This time of year, calving season, is critical for a species on the brink of extinction.
As part of an effort to protect one of the world’s most endangered large whale species, federal legislation forces boaters to slow down in waters where these whales are frequently spotted.
Federal law also states that vessels must stay at least 500 yards away from a right whale.
Hawkins said he knew he needed to give the right whale her space, but at such a close range, he feared turning on the boat engine would startle both mother and calf.
So he and the other boat driver decided to keep their engines off and drift, allowing the current to pull them north as she appeared to push south.
“Eventually, she just slowly started swimming away from us,” Hawkins said, estimating that the whole interaction in the morning lasted no more than four or five minutes.
Once the boats drifted about 100 yards away, Hawkins said he started the engine and slowly drove off. He then reported the sighting to authorities.
“I think she found a safe place there to to relax and chill out. And she was very welcome. We just did not want to intrude, “ he said.
Until this sighting on Monday, which was later confirmed by NOAA’s fisheries division, Slalom had previously been seen swimming with her calf just east of Pawleys Island in late November.
At the end of his Facebook live video, Hawkins reminded his viewers to give these creatures a wide berth. “We’re just gonna leave it alone, guys,” he said.
Hawkins said that the reason he chose to document this moment in real-time on social media was because he wanted the world to see these whales, too.
Maybe, he said, it will make people think twice before littering. Maybe, he said, it will stop someone from throwing another cigarette butt in the sand.
Maybe, he said, this video will remind boaters to slow down and look out for these right whales.
“These are God’s creatures that DNA formed, and it’s our job to protect them,” Hawkins said.
If we don’t protect them now, he continued, who knows if we will ever see them again.
This story was originally published December 9, 2021 at 10:55 AM with the headline "Endangered right whale and her calf surprise SC fishermen, leaving them all in awe."
