January 8th was a good day to be on the water. On our Wake Up with the Whales Cruise on Seasmoke, we started out by seeing 6 breeches from one whale just as we were leaving the bay. We also had a small competitive pod hang right around us for 45 minutes. This group was really aggressive with each other — we saw lots of lunges, peduncle throws and tail lobs. On Manu Iwa, guests saw a dozen different whales. There was also a lot of breaching, pec slapping and peduncle throwing going on with a competitive pod that hung around the boat for almost the whole cruise. Most of the time these whales were interacting with each other about 200 yards from us. We also saw splashes from lots of other whales who were breaching a little further away.

Have a great weekend! I’ll send out our Humpback Weekend Recap on Monday.

Mahalo,

Claire

Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Back on New Year’s Eve, I posted a fact about Humpback Whale vertebrae. One of my sources reported that of the 52-54 vertebrae found in a Humpback’s spine, 10 are fused to form the sacrum. Our favorite researcher Chris Gabriele (from the Hawaii Marine Mammal Consortium), who had recently been involved in a project putting a Humpback skeleton together contacted me to say that she didn’t see any fused bones. So she contacted bone articulation expert, Dan DenDanto at Whales and Nails who confirmed her observation. He said that it was rare for any balaenopterid whales to have fused bones except in the cervical region (their necks)…and occasionally at the site of an injury.