Aloha,

We saw lots of whale calves on our Thursday Whale Watches. On the Breakfast with the Whales Cruise, guests spotted 15 whales within a 3 mile radius of the boat, but we spent most of our time with a pod of 3 – Mom/Baby/Escort. This pod circled our boat a whole bunch of times, so close that we could see the tubercles on their faces (but not so close that we could see the whiskers on their tubercles)! Baby spy-hopped a few times, clearly looking at us too. We also saw 2 breaches within 50 feet of the boat, and when we dropped the hydrophone we heard some great song snippets. On our 10:00 Whale Watch, we had a similar experience and spent most of our time with a different Mom/Baby/Escort pod. And on the Whales and Cocktails Cruise, we found a pretty calm pod of Mom/Baby/Escort. They were just slowly swimming and spouting, until all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the escort did a full breach about 100 yards from the boat! It was one of those rare times that everyone was looking in that direction, so everyone on board got to see it!

Mahalo and have a wonderful weekend. I’ll send the next report out on Monday.

Claire

Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Being mammals, Humpback Whales nurse their calves with a very rich milk. Supposedly this milk tastes like sweet cod liver oil (though I haven’t tried it myself)!