EWS Update #6
01/12/97 - 01/20/97

        It's been a busy nine days. As we work into the latter half of January
the occurrence of whales in the heart of the calving ground is
increasing. You'll notice that on 01/16 we had four mother/calf pairs
off of a 14 mile stretch of coast between the Kings Bay channel and the
Jacksonville channel. The FL-DEP surveys teams are reporting mothers
with calves south of our area and Continental Shelf Associates, flying
offshore surveys for the Navy, has reported mother/calf pairs to the
north of our area. We've confirmed at least eight different moms from
analyses of our camera work and a couple more moms are in limbo while we
wait on photos. With the whales sighted north and south, it'd be fair to
say there may be a dozen or more moms in the southeast. All is well in
Fernandina. We hope the same for you. 

As always, thanks for your support and interest--
Chris Slay & Lisa Conger