Aloha,
We ran 4 whale watch cruises on Monday, but the highlight of the day happened on our Whales and Cocktails Cruise where, according to our onboard naturalist Mike, we saw LOTS of whales. We watched some tail lobbing from about 100 yards away. We also saw a couple of mom/baby pods, and 4 different competitive pods. Mike also reported that on Sunday, guests aboard our Whales and Cocktails Cruise got to see a Humpback spy-hopping more than 20 times. The whale was so close to the boat that everyone aboard could see the whale’s ventral pleats, as s/he rose vertically from the water. And when the whale sounded, we could clearly see the barnacles living on the edge of the his/her flukes This whale spy-hopped repeatedly…so much so that we ended up having to come in late (we can’t move the boat when the whale is less than 100 yards from us)!
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: The barnacles called “Coronula diadema” live only on Humpback Whales, and they seem to prefer to live on areas of the whale where the water flow is consistent (chin and fins). Though researchers aren’t sure how the barnacle can even find a whale to live on, there is some speculation that because the barnacles are spawning during the winter in Hawaii, the whales here are swimming in“barnacle larvae soup”. When a whale swims by, those “baby” barnacles chemically sense it, and hop on where ever they can. They use their antennae as“feet’ and walk around the whale till they find a suitable spot (which can take quite awhile…if the barnacle were the size of a person, the whale would be 20 miles long). Once they find a spot they like, they flip over and produce tube-shaped cavities in their shells that actually draw in prongs of growing whale skin, holding their position on the whale for life.