Gender of Pi the whale identified using drone photo

A humpback whale that has become a regular visitor to the Isles of Scilly has had a gender reveal but not the kind with brightly coloured pink and blue balloons.

Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust said a local wildlife watcher managed to get photos clear enough for identification, and Jay Cowen from the trust said: “The chances of that are basically one in a million.”

A local cetacean monitor analysed the images and confirmed Pi’s gender with global cetacean experts, as female.

Jay Cowen from the trust said “Pi is a girl” and they were “really excited” as she may be of breeding age.

The trust described it as “incredibly difficult” to get a high-enough quality photo of the underside of a whale to visually confirm their gender, and usually the presence or absence of a calf was a guide.

Cowen said: “It’s actually, as you might expect, very difficult to figure out a whale’s gender.

“Normally, you’d have to get quite close to them, either diving underneath them or waiting for them to flip upside down and take a photo at just the right second.

“The chances of that are basically one in a million.”

They said it was “incredibly lucky” that the local wildlife watcher was flying a photography drone and managed to take an image of Pi flipping on her back.

“That photo, hopefully not too much to Pi’s embarrassment, has now been passed around an international group of cetacean experts,” Cowen said.

After analysing the picture, experts agreed Pi was female.

Pi got her name for a scar near the dorsal fin which is in the shape of the mathematical symbol Pi, according to Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust.

It added Pi was the most reliably recurrent humpback whale recorded in the UK, having shown up in the Isles of Scilly every year since 2020.

She has also been spotted around Penzance, Ireland and the Outer Hebrides.

The trust said Pi was first spotted in UK water in 2019 and was not accompanied by a parent which would have made her at least one year old at the time.

They said they believe Pi is now seven to eight years old, at least.

Cowen added Pi being a female and her age was exciting because it meant “she’s about breeding age… maybe in the future we’re going to have some little mini Pis.”