Aloha,
The whales were out in force this weekend. On Friday’s afternoon Whale Watch on Seasmoke, guests saw 5 different Humpbacks. At first we just got to see some spouts, but when we got to the area where the spouts were, a lone adult surfaced about 50 yards from us turning out to sea. We thought that was kind of interesting — wondering what he was swimming away from and then a pod of two adult humpbacks surfaced right behind us. We saw dorsal fins, spouts, and flukes from all three of these whales. On our way back to the bay, we found another pod of two and just as I was explaining that we don’t always see a breach on every trip, one of the whales breached not once, but twice! On Friday’s Whales and Cocktails Cruise, we found a pod of 3 – Mom, baby and escort. This pod surfaced several times near us, and while we were watching them, we saw spouts from two more adult whales closer to shore.
Guests on Saturday’s Breakfast with the Whales Cruise used just one word to describe the trip: “AWESOME”. For almost the entire cruise, we were escorted by two big adult whales who decided to swim directly under us and along side. At one point one of them came between the hulls (we were adrift), and did a fluke dive right in front of the bow. Seasmoke is a pretty big catamaran – 58 feet long and 23 feet wide – but when that whale lifted his flukes right in front of us, we felt really, really small.
On Sunday’s Breakfast with the Whales, we saw a dozen different Humpbacks (which is a lot for this late in the season). We had one very close encounter, and several pretty close encounters with whales who were interested in us. We also got to see one head lunge. And on our Whales and Cocktails Cruise on Sunday, we saw 6 different Humpbacks, including one sub-adult who breached twice, and another bigger whale who tail lobbed a few times. When we deployed the hydrophone, we heard a Humpback symphony! And actually, three guests on board heard whale sounds after we had already pulled the hydrophone out of the water
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: According to research conducted by the Nelson Institute of Marine Research, a Humpback’s heart beats an average of 40bpm, but the whales do experience periods of tachycardia and bradycardia during dives.