Monthly Archives: January 2013

Stormy Weather doesn’t Bother the Humpbacks!

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Aloha,
Our Tuesday started off with stormy weather, forcing us to cancel our first two cruises. But the sightings on the Whales and Cocktails more than made up for it! On this trip we saw 30 different whales, lots of Moms and Babies and lots of surface activity including tail lobs, breaches (from adults and calves) and pec slaps. We had several close encounters with whales swimming right up along side our boat. And as we headed back into the bay, we were all excited to see another whale breach behind us.
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Humpback Whales have massive tongues. An 80,000 pound Humpback has a two-ton tongue

Competition Intensifies

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Aloha,
The Whale Watching is spectacular right now! Highlights from Monday include sightings of 20 different Humpbacks on our 10:00 Whale Watch, including 3 different Mom/Baby pods. One of these calves was really active, head lunging 4 times and tail lobbing 3 times.But the best part was watching him breach 5 different times. This little guy was really getting good at it – one of the times he actually got a half turn in mid-air! We also saw a competitive pod of 4 whales, and heard some nice clear songs through the hydrophone. The action continued on to the Whales and Cocktails Cruise where we saw 25 different Humpbacks including two competitive pods. The competition was fierce, and we got to witness pretty much every surface display you can see from a Humpback – tail lobs, peduncle throws, pec slaps, breaches, head lunges – you name it and we were there! We also found a Mom with her baby and watched baby breach (very cute when compared with our sightings of the big guys doing it in the throws of competition).
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: All mammals have hair. Humpback Whales are mammals… so where is their hair? Humpbacks have rows of bumps on their chins that we call “tubercles”. Out of each one, sticks a hair that’s about 1/2 inch long that we call a “vibrissa”. Because there’s a nerve ending underneath each hair, and blood flow to the nerve, we know the whales use these hairs to sense something…but we’re not sure what they’re sensing. Quite likely, they use their hairs like cats use their whiskers– to feel some sort of proprioception

Opportunistic Feeding!

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Aloha
On Thursday’s Breakfast with the Whales, our Captain and Crew reported seeing something very unusual. They said that they were watching 3 whales who were very close to the boat, come to the surface repeatedly with their mouths open. The fish finder on the boat showed that the area was packed with fish…so it’s very possible that guests got to see the whales feeding! This is definitely an unusual behavior for whales in lower latitudes (since generally they fast all winter long here), but it’s not unheard of. Researchers do say that the whales will feed opportunistically wherever they are, but that generally during mating and calving season the opportunity doesn’t come up very often. Besides these close-by whales, we saw lots of other whales spouting, and lots of splashes in the distance. At 10:00, no matter which direction we looked, we saw whales (about 30 over the course of the cruise). We saw pec slaps, head lunges, tail lobs, lots of sounding dives where we could see some great details on their flukes, and had a great close encounter with a whale who decided to swim right under the boat.
Mahalo and have a great weekend. I’ll send the next report out on Monday!
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day:   Researchers report that Humpbacks in Alaska can consume a ton of food in a day. Their diet consists mainly of very small fish like herring — based on the calorie count of herring, a Humpback in Alaska is consuming 1,500,000 calories each day!

Spy Hops, Breaches, and Lots of Singing

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Aloha,
Wednesday’s Whale Watches started out with a bang! On our Breakfast with the Whales Cruise, we saw somewhere around 35 different whales. We saw 20 breaches (mostly out on the horizon – we can’t always see the animal but we can see the SPLASH). We also saw 3 spy hops, and lots of pec slaps and tail lobs. On our 10:00 Whale Watch, we counted 20 different Humpbacks. We did see a competitive pod of 4 whales (our on-board naturalist Jonathan thinks they are the same individuals that we’ve been seeing for the last 3 days). We saw 2 breaches way on the horizon and a couple of head lunges closer in. On the Whales and Cocktails Cruise on Manu Iwa, we saw about 20 whales, and enjoyed watching a mom with her little calf. The baby was pretty active, tail lobbing right next to Mom. We saw a bunch of breaches in the distance, but we couldn’t believe it when a whale breached 40 yards from the boat.  Seasmoke was also out on a Whales and Cocktails Cruise last night and guests aboard that boat saw about 15 different whales. Everyone was really excited when a mature Humpback surfaced right behind the boat and then swam along side. Guests also saw a lot of breaching about 400 yards away from the boat. When we deployed the hydrophone on this trip, the sounds we heard were loud and clear.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: Spy hopping is one of the ways a Humpback can see what’s going on above the surface of the water. Because Humpbacks have really big heads proportionally, their eyes are about a third of the way down their bodies. When the whale spy hops, she rises slowly and vertically from the water, head first. If she’s a fully grown whale, her rostrum may be 15 feet above the surface before her eyes get there!

Humpbacks Swim Circles Around Us

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Aloha,
Aloha, Tuesday brought our whale watchers some great sightings! As we were leaving the harbor at 10:00, a whale surfaced about 20 feet from our bow! This whale spouted once, checked us out, and then went on his or her way. We saw a few breaches in the distance, and all in all, about 20 whales. We deployed the hydrophone on this trip, and just like yesterday, we heard some great singing. Everyone on the boat was pretty happy, and we were heading in when we encountered a pod of 5 whales who decided to swim circles around the boat! Lots of close encounters from these whales…lots of spouting…lots of excitement. It was a great end to a great charter! In the afternoon, we once again encountered whales right out of the harbor, but since we saw breaching a little bit further out, we went out to investigate. Turns out this was a pod of 5 pretty active whales. They stayed with us for about 20 minutes on the surface…and since the water was crystal clear, we could really see some great details. We saw 10 whales on this trip all together.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: When we say we heard LOUD singing yesterday, just how loud do we mean? Well, Humpback Whales have been recorded producing sounds at around 185 decibels. Because the decibel scales use different references for sounds underwater than thru the air, that’s the equivalent of about 123 decibels for us on the surface…which is as loud as the amplified music at a rock concert when you’re standing directly in front of a tower of speakers.

A Beautiful Voice

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Aloha,
It’s definitely winter on the Kohala Coast with gusty winds and swells…but we think the whales are enjoying the conditions because our Whale Watch Cruises have been reporting some great sightings.HIghlights from Monday include the Breakfast with the Whales, during which guests saw lots of whales including two different calves. We also saw 4 breaches, and when we deployed our hydrophone, we heard what our on board naturalist Mike called “the most beautiful voices ever heard on the planet earth” (and Mike is also a very talented musician, so he knows a beautiful voice when he hears it)! On our 10:00 Whale Watch, we saw a total of 20 different whales. We watched a competitive pod of 4 whales for quite a while, and saw 4 head lunges, two pec slaps and a peduncle throw from them. This pod swam directly underneath the boat…first we saw them on the surface at the bow, and then they disappeared briefly, only to surface again at our 7:00 position. We saw two cow/calf pairs without escorts and when we deployed our hydrophone, we heard some great singing on this cruise too.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day:   All whales, regardless of species, age, or gender make noises. Only Humpback Whales sing an organized song…and only male Humpbacks sing. We used to believe that the males only “sing” when they are in the warmer waters where they mate, though now that we’re listening more closely, we have heard the males singing a bit in their colder feeding waters (mostly at the end of feeding season prior to the beginning of the migration). So, is the male Humpback singing a mating song? Researchers have observed that female whales will not approach a singing male, so if this is a mating song, it seems to be a pretty ineffective one. I’ll share more theories about the purpose of the Humpback Song in future emails.

Humpbacks, False Killer Whales, and even a Hammerhead!

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Aloha,
Our weekend whale watching started out with “too many whales to count” on Friday’s Breakfast with the Whales Cruise. We spent about an hour with a pod of 3  – Mom, her calf and an escort. The calf was really active – lobbing his little tail over and over. We also had a couple of very close encounters with whales swimming just 10 feet away from the boat! On our 10:00 Whale Watch, we saw 30 whales! We had breaches close to the boat; we saw a spy hop, head lunges, tail lobs, pec slaps and double pec slaps – pretty much every behavior in the book! On the Whales and Cocktails Cruise. the highlight of the trip was either the competitive pod of 6 whales repetitively tail lobbing and peduncle throwing…or the VERY CLOSE BREACH. We couldn’t decide which was more exciting. On Saturday’s Breakfast with the Whales, we encountered a pod of two whales just outside of the Bay. They stayed with us for awhile, but then we saw a pod of 5, so we headed out to see them. They were really active on the surface, breaching and tail lobbing, and at one point all 5 of them crossed our bow just 20 feet away. On our 10:00 Whale Watch, we saw 25 whales, including a fairly active competitive pod of 3. The two males were clearly jockeying for position to get closer to the female…lots of trumpeting and bubble blowing from them. We also saw two breaches on the horizon, tail lobs and peduncle throws. But the highlight of this trip is when our naturalist Jonathan saw something white floating on the water. As we got closer we were able to determine it was a Hammerhead Shark! This shark was probably 8-10 feet long, (which is normal for that species) and it stayed with the boat for almost 20 minutes! On Sunday’s 10:00 Whale Watch we saw 7 whales including two pods of Mom/Baby without escorts. When we deployed the hydrophone, we heard faint singing. And to top off the day, on our Whales and Cocktails trip, not only did we see a lots of Humpbacks, but we also saw a pod of false killer whales (they look like kind of like  big – really big – dolphins, and though they’re shaped a lot like orcas, they don’t have the white markings). False Killer Whales (Pseudorca crassidens) are not really that rare, although we don’t see them often in shallow water. They feed on large fish and squid, and average between 16-20 feet long.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: Friday’s pectoral and double pectoral slaps showed our guests the most distinctive physical characteristic of the Humpback Whale…Humpback Whales have the longest Pectoral Fins (arms) of any of the great whales. They’re so distinctive that the Latin Genus name (Megaptera) for the Humpback actually describes those fins…The Genus and Species names are “Megaptera Novaengliae” meaning“Big-Winged New Englander” and pronounced “MAY-ga-terra No-vee-ANG-li-ee.