Aloha,

Guests on all of our Thursday cruises saw Humpbacks. On the 10:00 Whale Watch on Alala out of Kawaihae, we cruised around for almost the whole trip till we found a juvenile Humpback right in front of the harbor. This whale was pretty mellow, just surfacing, spouting, and then diving for 7 minutes before coming up and doing it all again.  Since it took so long for us to find each other, and with the support of the guests on board, Captain Will decided to stay out for an extra half hour so we could all enjoy the experience.

On the Whales and Cocktails Cruise, two sub-adult whales found us and appeared to be curious about our presence, They hung around with us for about 30 minutes! At one point, one of them surfaced about 20 feet from our stern, so we all got a good look at each other. We also got to see a peduncle throw from one of them (a “peduncle throw” describes the whale throwing the back half of his body out of water – generally thought to be an expression of aggression towards another whale close by).

Hope your Thursday was as interesting and fun as ours!

Mahalo,

Claire

Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: It takes an average of just under 3 months for the Humpbacks to migrate from the summer feeding grounds in Alaska to Hawaii (although at least one Humpback was seen in Alaska and then in Hawaii just 45 days later). That means the Humpbacks are generally swimming at a speed of about 4 knots (a little bit faster than we travel when taking a brisk walk)!