Aloha,

Wednesday brought us a perfect day for sailing and whale watching. The only Whale Watch we ran was our Whales and Cocktails Cruise at 3:00 pm from Anaeho’omalu Bay on Seasmoke. We were treated to a whole bunch of really excited calves. We saw 6 different Mom/Baby pods – all within a mile of the bay. 4 of those pods were accompanied by at least one escort. The calves seemed to be enjoying the weather too as we saw one calf breach 14 times! Another calf breached 5 times, and head lunged twice. We also saw multiple tail lobs and pec slaps from an adult whale, and a couple of breaches and peduncle throws from one of the moms who was accompanied by (or more likely, bothered by) an escort. When we dropped the hydrophone in the water, we heard a whale “symphony”. Lots of whales were singing, though none was really very close to us. If you have access to facebook and want to see some photos from last night’s cruise, visit the Hawaii Ocean Sports fan page (type”Hawaii Ocean Sports” into the search box) – Captain Jeff shared some great shots with us.

Mahalo,

Claire

Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: Humpback Whales play host to all kinds of other animals. Besides the barnacles we often see on the Humpbacks’ flukes and other skin surfaces, the whales can also carry tape worms, lung worms, sinus flukes, and whale lice (which are related to skeleton shrimp) among others. Not all of these parasites actually harm the whale (which means that technically, they can’t really all be considered“parasites”). In fact, the barnacles might actually benefit the male Humpbacks who appear to use the sharp edges of the shells (perhaps inadvertently) as weapons during competitive battles.