On our whale watch this morning, we met up with Echo and her very energetic calf! We noticed the duo from miles away by the enormous white splashes the calf was making as it breached.

Breaching on mom: Echo's calf practices full body breaches

Like many calves we’ve seen this season, Echo’s calf appeared to be mimicking Echo’s kick feeding.

While Echo exhibited systematic, controlled pumps of her fluke, the calf seemed to sloppily throw the caudal half of its body into the air, not really certain where it was going to land.

Other times, the calf appeared to be doing under water head stands to test how long it could keep its fluke held high in the air.

While Echo’s calf played, Echo blew bubbles and did an array of subsurface feeding, kick feeding and open mouth lunging.

It was really adorable to watch this young, excited calf test the limits of its body as it tried new things. At one point, it was calmly spyhopping at us, and with one, quick flick of its fluke it splashed everyone on the port pulpit!

Echo's calf was highly curious and spent a lot of time swimming right up to the boat.

Osprey also came over for some time and repeatedly dove down (see photo) to create bubble nets while Echo did the same nearby.

Osprey diving

As part of the calf’s grand finale, it’s tail breaching evolved into full body breaching (see photo at top of post)! She repeated these majestic displays seven to ten times until we had to pull ourselves away from the breaching calf and head back to Boston.

Tasia, Naturalist/Photographer