Aloha,

The whales are still out there! On our Breakfast with the Whales Cruise, we saw whales in all directions…including pods of Mom/Baby/Escort and a couple of competitive pods. On our 10:00 Whale Watch we saw a total of 5 breaches including one from a calf…two of these breaches were about 100 yards from the boat creating HUGE splashes. We also saw several head lunges and a couple of peduncle throws. Twice we had whales come up less than 100 yards from us. And on the Whales and Cocktails Cruise, the babies were out in full force. We saw lots of pods of Mom/Baby and almost all of these pods were accompanied by an escort (we suspect that in the pods where we didn’t see an escort, he was still around, but just hadn’t surfaced).

Mahalo,

Claire

Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Since 1991, Whale Watchers off the coast of Australia have been seeing an all-white Humpback. They named him “Migaloo”, which is the aboriginal word for “white fella”, and DNA samples taken from skin he sloughed off into the water after a breach confirmed that he is, in fact, a male. He was believed to be the only all white Humpback in the world until September 2011, when an all white Humpback calf was spotted off of the Australian Coast. Whale watchers named him “Migaloo Jr”, and researchers are trying to determine if this little calf is related to Migaloo Senior. Up until very recently, researchers assumed that Migaloo was a true albino whale, but now he’s considered to be “hypo-pigmented” since they aren’t totally sure he produces absolutely no pigment (his eyes may have color). And yes…Migaloo does have problems with the sun. Whale Watchers in Australia have noted the poor guy does get quite the sunburn. And just this past November, another white Humpback was spotted off the coast of Norway.