Aloha,

Well, the wind is beginning to calm down for some parts of the island, and that’s helping us get the boats to the whales! On our 8:00 Breakfast with the Whales, we saw 3 Humpbacks. 2 of them were spouting in the distance, but the 3rd was an adult that did a complete peduncle throw about 100 yards from the boat. We also got to see this whale’s flukes — black with two distinct white spots. And on the 10:00 Whale Watch, our naturalist Jonathan reports that we found 2 Humpbacks. They weren’t doing much on the surface…just spouting and sounding. But we did deploy the hydrophone and heard some pretty loud, clear and vibrant singing, which means there are still some male Humpbacks hanging out on the Kohala coast. And based on what we were hearing, they had to be fairly close to the boat. We didn’t run a Whales and Cocktails trip yesterday, so I can’t report what the Humpbacks were up to in the late afternoon.

There’s less than 3 weeks left of our fantastic 2011/2012 Whale Watching Season…don’t miss out! Call 886-6666 ext. 103 or visit www.hawaiioceansports.com to reserve your adventure today.

Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: The haunting song of the Humpback  has actually travelled beyond our oceans. In 1977, NASA launched two Voyager spacecrafts. Aboard each was a golden record with a collection of sites, sounds and greetings from Earth in 54 different human languages. These records also include greetings from Humpback whales!  And that was just the first time the whales’ song travelled beyond our planet…On  Earth Day (4/22) in 2005, a private organization called Deep Space Network broadcast a live feed from a hydrophone off the coast of Maui of the Humpbacks singing. They used a five meter parabolic dish antenna and broadcast the sounds about 18 trillion miles into deep space. So far, we haven’t gotten a response back….

Mahalo,

Captain Claire