Aloha,

We had nice weekend of whale watching – too many trips to report everything, so I’ll just summarize the highlights, starting with Friday’s Breakfast with the Whales cruise where 3 adult humpbacks decided to surround our boat for close to 15 minutes. On Saturday’s 12:30 Whale Watch from Kawaihae, we got to watch an interesting interaction between Mom and her baby. The calf breached about 10 times before mom did a big peduncle throw landing her tail just about on top of the calf…was Mom trying to tell her baby “enough! settle down!”?. We also saw some beautiful fluke dives from a different Cow/Calf/Escort pod – Mom’s flukes were all black, and the escort had some very distinct white patches on his flukes. On Saturday’s Whales and Cocktails Cruise we saw 5 different Cow/Calf/Escort pods. We had two really, really close encounters when different escorts came right up along side the boat. We also saw some pretty vigorous tail lobbing and peduncle throws from a different pod. On Sunday, guests aboard our Breakfast with the Whales Cruise saw lots of breaches in the wind, but were most excited by the Mom and calf who circled our boat for more than 20 minutes. We all got a very good look at these whales (and they got a very good look at us too)!. And a similar thing happened to us on the Sunday Whales and Cocktails Cruise when a Mom and her calf decided to spend a considerable amount of time right next to us. We also saw a series of tail lobs and a peduncle throw from a competitive pod, and lots of breaches but they were in the wind, and we decided it wasn’t worth it to travel out there to see those whales.

Mahalo,

Claire

Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: At birth, a Humpback Whale Calf weighs betweeen 3% and 4% of his Mom’s weight. Interestingly, at birth, human babies average 4%-5% of their Mom’s weight.