First Documented Resighting of a Dwarf Minke Whale From Calf to Adulthood in the Great Barrier Reef Indicates Long‐Term Colour Pattern Stability and Site Fidelity
Claire E. Wouters, R. Alastair Birtles, Suzanne Hillcoat, Naomi M. Gardiner · 2026
Read First Documented Resighting of a Dwarf Minke Whale From Calf to Adulthood in the Great Barrier Reef Indicates Long‐Term Colour Pattern Stability and Site Fidelity by Claire E. Wouters, R. Alastair Birtles, Suzanne Hillcoat, Naomi M. Gardiner (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13278017.txt.
Description
Claire E Wouters leads a 2026 field study of one dwarf minke whale in Australia's Great Barrier Reef, tracked from calf to adult. Dwarf minke whales gather each winter in the northern reef, the only predictable gathering site known. Researchers compared every photographed calf from 2003 to 2023 against a catalogue of known whales.
One whale, coded MW0088 and nicknamed Rudi, was first seen as a calf in 2006 and was resighted on and off through 2017, by then a mature eleven-year-old. Its color patterns barely changed over twelve years, which validates photo identification over long spans. Returning to its birth wintering ground is the first direct proof of natal site loyalty in these whales.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Claire E. Wouters, R. Alastair Birtles, Suzanne Hillcoat, Naomi M. Gardiner |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 18529 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |