Aloha,

Though it’s getting to the end of our Whale Watch Season, we had some incredible cruises and experiences this weekend. On Saturday’s10:00 Whale Watch, we saw about 18 whales all together, including three different Mom/Baby/Escort pods. We had close encounters with two of the Mom/Baby/Escort pods, and also saw a competitive pod doing their usual aggressive posturing. On Saturday’s Whales and Cocktails Cruise we motored around till we saw a breach. And while we were investigating the breacher, two different Mom/Baby/Escort pods found us! It was strange seeing them so close together, especially when each of these groups decided to spend time with us. We were mugged by these two pods for 40 minutes, and got to see a spy hop about 5 feet from the boat, and watch one of the calves breach 3 times about 20 feet from the boat. On the 10:00 Whale Watch on Sunday, we saw lots of different whales…lots of spouting and fluke dives too.

Mahalo,

Claire

Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day:In 2004, a company called Whale Power was founded by Dr.Frank Fish, Dr. Phil Watts and Stephen Dewar. The company builds fan blades shaped like a Humpback’s Pectoral Fins with tubercles on the leading edge. The ironically named Dr.Fish was inspired to develop the prototype after looking at a sculpture of a Humpback, and pondering how (or if) the bumps on the front of the whale’s fins would help him move efficiently through the water. He and his partners enlisted the help of the Navy and used their wind tunnel to discover that tubercles break up air (or water flow)…and now with the whale-inspired design, Whale Power’s turbine blades are not only more efficient than smooth blades, but they never stall out violently like smooth blades do, and thus don’t damage the turbine engines. The company’s motto… “A Million Years of Field Tests”.