Second whale spotted in Montreal area
Posted May 12, 2022 11:57 am.
And then there were two!
After a young minke whale was first spotted Sunday in the St. Lawrence River near the city’s Parc Jean-Drapeau, a second whale has now joined it.
There are now officially two whales in the waters off Montreal, making this a first in more than a century.
That second whale was spotted at around noon Wednesday in the St. Lawrence River near the Maisonneuve area.
Local excitement over whale sighting
Late Monday afternoon, the first whale could be seen in a section of the river that flows between two islands, in the shadow of the Montreal Biosphere built for Expo 67.
Crowds lined a bridge that spans the waterway, pointing and gasping as the small grey whale came up periodically for air.
At the time, Robert Michaud of the Réseau Québécois d’urgences pour les mammifères marins (RQUMM) said it was not clear why the whale would make such a long journey into a freshwater habitat that’s not healthy for it.
He was worried that the minke might be ill or disoriented, but also possibly just curious.
Michaud said that Minke whales are “the smallest of the big whales,” reaching around eight metres in length.
“While they’re fairly common in Quebec, they don’t generally venture west of the St. Lawrence estuary around Tadoussac,” he says, “where the water is salty.”
RELATED:
Surprise! There’s another whale
While researchers have been keeping a close eye on the first whale, trying to keep it safe, they didn’t expect a second whale to make an appearance.
Considering how rare the sighting of one whale is in these waters, two of them has many of them questioning what’s going on. They say, they don’t quite have the answers at the moment.
Their primary goal is to “give these wild animals the best chance to find their way back and head back downstream,” reads a release from the RQUMM.
Scientists are not the only ones concerned. Many Montrealers remember what happened the last time a whale was spotted in these waters.
The sightings come nearly two years after a humpback whale, spent several days near Montreal’s Old Port, where it delighted curious onlookers with its acrobatic leaps out of the water.
Despite its apparent good health, that whale was found dead in June 2020, and a necropsy suggested the 10-metre-long animal may have been hit by a boat.
