Andrew Stevenson’s phone is constantly ringing. It’s been a busy season for whales, and residents want to keep the Island’s expert informed when they are spotted.

He has already recorded 58 sightings, and has also identified close to 1,000 flukes in Bermuda since he began his whale research nine seasons ago. He keeps a summary of statistics on his website, www.whalesbermuda.com.

Mr Stevenson believes his research on North Atlantic humpbacks’ mid-ocean migratory behaviour is helping to nurture interest in young people.

“That has always been my primary goal, to educate Bermuda kids about their marine environment, and particularly humpbacks,” he said.

“My two daughters play rugby. One Saturday morning a father came up and said he wanted to introduce his son to me.

“He said he’d been fascinated with whales as a result of watching my film, Where the Whales Sing. It’s stories like that that let me know I’m getting through to them.

“Now some of these kids are older, they’re at university studying marine biology and I think some of that has to do with the educational impact of what I’m doing, raising awareness of kids to highly charismatic animals.”

From a research standpoint, the knowledge he shares with students through his films, books and school visits is “completely unique”, Mr Stevenson said.

“We will have, we’ve almost got it now, 1,000 fluke IDs — that’s individual whales ID’d in Bermuda alone; one of the largest catalogues from one place. So this is a significant database for scientific research. There’s nowhere else in the world where this is being done in the middle of the ocean.

“Any other research is done in the breeding or feeding grounds. This data that we’re getting is cutting-edge stuff. This is completely unique stuff.”

Mr Stevenson has shared his findings at public gatherings and in private homes around the Island.

He said that other citizen scientists such as himself had been particularly interested in discovering how frequently an individual whale passes by Bermuda, and the number of days that it spends in our waters.

“I’ve done 25 days on the water looking for whales this season and by conventional wisdom, the season hasn’t even started,” he said. “A decade ago, the start of the season was March 28, for three weeks.

“What we’re most interested in now is not whether these whales match to specific feeding areas up north, but resightings in Bermuda [from year to year], and layovers. This year, the longest span was six days; before, it was nine days.”

According to the marine enthusiast, the same whale was identified off Bermuda on January 21 and on March 22. He said that the question became whether the whale was “hanging around here all this time or was it on way down south earlier and on its way up north now?”.

“It will take decades of research to fill in all these gaps,” he added. “One of the problems in Bermuda is the weather. We get out in spurts; we can’t get out for a week. But one thing that’s very clear is the number of whales hanging around Bermuda is dramatically increasing.”

This could be due to any number of factors, Mr Stevenson said.

“The obvious one is since the moratorium on whaling, the number of whales is increasing,” he said. “The second point is there’s a dedicated effort [by whale watchers].

“I’m going out there looking, so it’s raised people’s awareness and so they’re going out looking. There’s also the possibility that Bermuda is once again becoming a breeding and calving ground.”

There have been “very reliable sightings” of newborn calves off the Island in December and January for four years running, Mr Stevenson explained.

“It’s normal to see lots in March or April after they’re born in the West Indies, but over the years we’ve been seeing breeding behaviour here and what that means is we see a group of five to seven whales fighting over a female,” he said. “So there’s no question they’re breeding here and it would seem as if we might start to see calves born here on a consistent basis.”

Mr Stevenson is now working on a sequel to Where the Whales Sing. He expects it will be ready in about two seasons.

“It will be exactly along the lines of the previous one, narrated by my daughter [Elsa] again, but she’ll now be 12 instead of six,” he said. “There will be a lot more footage, a lot more data and a lot more information than the first one.

“I’ve got all the underwater footage I need, all the data I need. What I need is aerial footage so I will be using a drone, when possible, to get aerial footage but that won’t be easy. I really need to give myself another two seasons to get dramatic footage in ideal conditions.”

His work and ensuing media coverage has seen interest in whales and whale watching rise “dramatically” over the past decade, Mr Stevenson said.

“There’s a four/five-minute video behind customs at the airport, [there’s my] photographic exhibit, my book ... the film has shown thousands of times on CITV.

“It’s a huge plus in Bermuda that they will broadcast stuff like that for free.

“So it’s a huge educational public awareness campaign that I’ve done over the last nine years and then you’ve got the website — thousands of pages and photographs waiting to be mined, if interested.

“We’re coming up for three million hits. It’s all to raise public awareness but in particular [aimed at] kids. They’re my prime goal as evidenced by film, narrated by a kid.”

• An exhibit of Mr Stevenson’s whale photography opens at Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art at 5.30pm tomorrow. The exhibit runs until April 15 in the Rick Faries Gallery