Aloha,

We started our Wednesday off on a nice, calm ocean, but the whales were anything but calm! On our Breakfast with the Whales Cruise, we saw 2 different Mom/Baby/Escort pods. We stayed with each of them for quite awhile…and the calf from the second pod delighted us when she breached 3 times right next to the boat! We also saw pec slaps and tail lobs from different adults, and when we dropped the hydrophone, we heard some very clear songs. For a grand finale on this cruise, another pod of whales swam right under the boat. Captain Scotty turned off the motors, and was able to see the whales on our depth sounder…and to top it off, the whales then decided it would be a good idea to pop up  5 feet from the boat…we couldn’t believe our luck (or their curiosity). As the wind came up through the day, we saw lots more surface activities. On our Whales and Cocktails Cruise, we saw multiple breaches, pec slaps and tail lobs. We also saw several peduncle throws and some other splashes (not sure which behaviors caused those…but whatever was going on was HUGE).

Mahalo,

Claire

Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: In 1919, R.G. Meyers, who was working towards his PhD in Chemistry at Stanford University, conducted a chemical analysis of Humpback whale blood collected from the thoracic cavity of a whale killed in Monterey Bay. He found that the Humpback’s total cholesterol level was similar to a healthy human’s, but the glucose level was 4 times what’s considered a “healthy” level for a human. Since there’s not a lot of carbohydrates in a Humpback’s diet, he theorized that a Humpback’s liver and pancreas work differently than ours.