Underwater photographer and environmental researcher Tony Wu has been cataloguing the humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) that visit the waters around Kingdom of Tonga each year to breed. In the course of this he has found that the individual female featured in Darren Rice’s video has now had 7 separate calves over a 15 year period and he has dubbed her “super mommy”. He describes how the discovery was made:

“Darren’s and JJ’s videos in 2014; photos taken by Kirsty Bowe and me in 2012; photos taken by Nonie Silver and Karen Stone in 2009; photos taken by me in 2008; photos taken by me in 2005; BBC stock footage taken in 2002 that Michele Hall helped me track down, which was part of a 2009 NatGeo documentary I watched late one night while in Palau at my friend Ron’s house; photos taken by Claudia Jocher in 1998 and 1999.

How’s that for crowd-sourcing and citizen science?!”