Active Adult Humpbacks and a Curious Calf

Aloha,
Based on the Humpback activity these days, you can sure tell it’s February! On Monday’s 10:00 Whale Watch, we had barely left the harbor when we saw 2 full breaches from what turned out to be a Mom/Baby/Escort pod. Unlike our experiences the past few days, it was the adults who were most active, and baby just swam on the surface. After watching this pod for awhile, we headed over to a competitive pod of 5 whales where we heard lots of trumpeting (the sounds whales make when they’re breathing hard) and saw lots of tail lobs. As we headed back to the harbor, we found the same Mom/Baby/Escort pod we had seen in the beginning of the trip. This time, baby decided it was time to check us out, and we watched as he made his approach to the stern of the boat. He couldn’t get too close though before Mom decided to step in and guide this little guy away from us. To top it all off, a big pod (we estimated about 150) of Spinner Dolphins found us and decided our boat was worth playing with – many of them swam right over to ride our bow and stern wakes.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: A baby whale, called a “calf” looks so small and cute when seen playing with her Mom. But everything is relative…when the calf is born, she can already be 10 to as much as 15 feet long, and she weighs 2000 to 3000 pounds! The calf is about 26 feet long when it’s weaned (at 10-11 months).

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