One thing Peter Weedon will not forget the next time he goes whale watching is his “Housekey”.

While many people would follow this simple rule, Housekey is actually the name that has been approved for a never-before-recorded Humpback Whale Mr. Weedon photographed earlier this year.

While on board a whale watching tour with Fantasea cruises off Pompano Beach on March 17, Mr. Weedon took pictures of the flukes (tail) of two large whales the boat tracked for over two hours.

Although Mr. Weedon was not the only person to take pictures that day, he pursued the matter further and sent his photographs to the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.

The college maintains the North Atlantic Humpback Catalogue, a large record of humpback whale flukes that have been photographed.

The underside of a Humpback's tail have a pattern that is unique like a fingerprint which makes it easy to identify each individual whale.

Through e-mails, Mr. Weedon learned that the catalogue was started in 1977 and contains thousands of photographs of over 5,000 individual humpback whales gathered from 300 scientists and non-scientists from all known breeding and feeding areas for humpbacks in the North Atlantic Ocean.

After many persistent calls to the facility, Mr. Weedon only recently learned that one of the whales in his pictures had been identified as Dona Diego, a whale that is believed to have first been photographed in 1985 in the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence near Quebec and Newfoundland.

However, the other whale was unknown to the College. What Mr. Weedon describes as a “neat” surprise turned out to be a “new” or unrecorded whale.

Mr. Weedon was allowed to suggest a name for the “new” whale provided he would give a meaningful name based on a marking or pigmentation on the tail pattern. He was also not permitted to offer any human names unless they represented a concept.

In explaining why he offered the name “Housekey” Mr. Weedon explained that the left part of the tail resembled a house key.

In a memo to the college he wrote: “I have poured over the photos very carefully and have decided that the ‘new whale' should be named ‘Housekey' because of the left fluke markings.

“Taking the entire white pigmented area together, I think that the image resembles a house key complete with an opening in its centre for the key chain.”

When asked how he feels to have made such a discovery, Mr. Weedon said: “Well, it's kinda neat. We told some of our friends we have a new pet.”

Mr. Weedon also learned that photographs of whales taken in the region of Bermuda rarely get sent to the college.

Should anyone wish to know if a Humpback Whale they have photographed has been added to the Catalogue, he or she can contact the College of the Atlantic homepage at www.coa.edu/index.html

Or access the Catalogue directly at: www.coa.edu/alliedwhale/nahump