This text is taken from Courrier de la planete. Click here to subscribe.
Every year, its return is awaited and welcomed by whale lovers on the North Shore, and the year 2024 is no exception. The humpback whale Tic Tac Toe, a real star of the Saguenay–St. Lawrence Marine Park, was seen last week in the Tadoussac sector.
This means that this female, now 27 years old and known since 1999, has just arrived from the long migration which probably took her to the Caribbean in recent months.
Tic Tac Toe is recognizable by the “X” that can be seen under its caudal fin when it dives. The patterns of its coloring and the marks visible under the caudal fin of humpback whales are the most commonly used means to identify individuals of this species.
Tic Tac Toe has spawned a few times over the years. In 2007, she was even the first humpback whale to bring her calf, a female named Aramis, into the estuary. Subsequently, the two whales were seen swimming together in the St. Lawrence on several occasions. And in 2020, researchers working in the Turks and Caicos Islands spotted Aramis with her first calf. Tic Tac Toe thus became a grandmother at the age of 23.
According to the first details of the presence of Tic Tac Toe in the Tadoussac sector this year, she is not accompanied by a calf and she seemed a little thin. “This may be normal given that humpback whales migrate to the Antilles in winter and spend the cold season without feeding, living on their fat reserves,” specifies the Marine Mammal Research and Education Group on its Whales live site.
Other humpback whales are well known in the St. Lawrence, and are seen almost every year. This is particularly the case for Siam. This humpback whale, known since 1981, is the oldest of the species in Quebec and has long been the only one to go up the St. Lawrence to Tadoussac.
But over the years, humpback whales have become more numerous to be seen in the region, despite significant fluctuations from year to year. In 2021, more than 100 humpback whales were observed in the marine park sector alone. For comparison, for the period from 2008 to 2017, the annual average was five individuals, a figure which reached 26 in 2019, then 21 in 2020.