A drone pilot accidentally captures a scene that has never been recorded in history
“At first, I thought she was injured or being attacked”
French Off the east coast of Australia, Alexander Forrest, a volunteer drone pilot for the cetacean rescue organization ORRCA, accidentally filmed the birth of a humpback calf. While tracking the whales’ migration, he spotted a female moving unusually slowly. Seeing a patch of blood in the water, he initially thought she might be injured or under attack by a predator, before suddenly seeing a small calf weighing about 1.5 metric tons break the surface. This footage marks the fourth humpback whale birth ever filmed in history, but more importantly, the very first captured from the air by a drone. The images show the mother helping her newborn return to the surface to take its first breaths of air (whales must breathe consciously). Scientists had previously believed that humpback whales gave birth exclusively in the tropical waters of the north at the end of their migration. This birth, filmed further south in New South Wales, could lead researchers to reevaluate their assumptions about the species’ calving grounds.