Humpbacks Look for Attention

Aloha,
Guests aboard our Wednesday Whale Watches did see a lot of Humpbacks. On our Breakfast with the Whales Cruise, we saw at least 20 different Humpbacks, but according to our on-board naturalist Captain Mike, they were all pretty mellow. Just after we left the harbor, a pod of Spinner Dolphins found our boat, and as usual, seemed to think we were an interesting object to play with. We had lots of bow-surfing, and lots of jumps and spins all around us from the dolphins. After they left, we were approached by a couple of big whales, who surfaced about  20 yards from us– followed by a close encounter with a Mom/Baby/Escort pod. If that weren’t exciting enough, we saw a couple of total breaches just 300 yards away. As we cruised back to the harbor, we saw lots more flukes and spouts from various whales who were cruising the coastline. On the 10:00 Cruise, we spent our time with two different Mom/Baby/Escort pods. Both babies were kind of restless, rolling around a lot on the surface. And on our Sunset Cruise, we were visited by a lone (maybe lonely?) young adult whale. This guy came right up to the boat and spent some time hanging out with us.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: A Humpback whale’s trachea and esophagus are totally separate tubes (unlike ours which meet up in the back of our mouths)…but that also means that a Humpback can only breathe thru her blowholes and not thru her mouth. So how does a Humpback blow a small stream of bubbles from her mouth? Research suggests that a Humpback can move her epiglottis against her soft palate, and channel air thru her larynx to her mouth.

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