I have to begin this update with an add-on from Wednesday. We got to witness our first competitive pod of the season during Wednesday night’s Sunset Cruise on Alala from Kawaihae. Throughout the course of the cruise, we saw about a dozen whales, but it was just outside of the harbor where we saw the wildest action. 5 whales were chasing each other, head lunging, charging, and trumpeting. One of them breached not one, not two, but three times just 50 feet from the boat! Un-bee-leiv-able!

We started out our Thursday with our Wake up With the Whales Cruise. Captain Jeff Baker reports an outstanding adventure..with pec slaps, a couple of breaches and even a couple of curious whales who swam right underneath us to take a look at us. On the 10:00 Cruise we got to see a mother and a calf (only the second calf we’ve seen this season). Baby was pretty curious about us, and when we stopped the boat, Mom let him swing by to take a good look at us. And on our Whales and Cocktails Cruise, we spent the 1st hour cruising around, but the second hour made up for it when we found two Humpbacks offshore of the Mauna Lani Resort area. These whales were surrounded by a pod of Bottlenose Dolphins. And the Bottlenose Dolphins were acting like Spinners – jumping, leaping and flipping. The whales didn’t seem nearly as interested or excited by the dolphins as we were.

Mahalo and have a great weekend. I’ll send out the weekend recap on Monday!

Claire

Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: At birth, a Humpback whale calf weighs between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds which is between 3% and 4% of his Mom’s weight. Interestingly, at birth, human babies are proportionally larger, averaging  4%-5% of their Mom’s weight