Aloha,

We had a great start to our Whale Watching week with our 8:00 Breakfast with Whales cruise. we saw 15 different whales and spent a good deal of time watching a Cow/Calf/Escort pod. Baby breached three times, did one peduncle throw (well — it was sort of an attempt at a peduncle throw, but mostly just a big splash) and tried to approach us, but Mom  kept him from getting too close. We also saw an adult whale pectoral slapping 4 times. When we deployed the hydrophone, we heard some pretty clear singing from a couple of whales nearby. On the 10:00 Whale Watch, we saw 12 whales, but the highlight of the trip was being mugged for 20 minutes. The whale kept swimming right underneath us and we could see those long white pec fins of his clearly through the water. When we deployed the hydrophone, we actually got to hear a Mom and her baby vocalizing! Our naturalist, Jonathan, reports that the patterns of those vocalizations were very different from the Humpback Song we typically hear the male whales singing. He also noted that the Cow/calf pair were so close to us that when the sounds stopped, we could look over and watch them surface– a dead give away that this was the pair we were listening to!. On our 3:00 Whales and Cocktails cruise, we saw 7 whales, and spent most of our time watching two sub-adults. At one point they swam close enough to us that we could hear them breathing. One of these sub-adults was right on the tail of the other, and they whale in front didn’t seem to be enjoying the attention from his buddy — we watched him express his displeasure with a few small tail lobs.

Join Ocean Sports for a Whale Watch Adventure. Call 886-6666 ext. 103 or visit www.hawaiioceansports.com to reserve your spot today.

Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: Being mammals, Humpbacks have belly buttons —  in case you’re wondering….they’re “innies”.

Mahalo,

Captain Claire