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!