As is par for the course in the middle of January, we saw lots of Humpbacks all day on Tuesday. On the Wake Up with the Whales Cruise, the highlights included some pretty close-by pec slaps from one whale, lots of tail lobs from some other Humpbacks, and 4 different breaches. On our Whales and Cocktails Cruise, we found ourselves the object of interest for a competitive pod of 6 whales. We assume these whales are much more interested in each other than they are in us, but even though we stopped the boat, the pod swam to us and spent more than 30 minutes right around us before swimming off together. If there was a female in the pod (and of course, we couldn’t determine the whales’ genders for sure), was she using our boat as an obstacle between herself and those males? It sure looked like that to us!

Mahalo,

Claire

Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: When we watch a surface active competitive pod of whales, we assume it is comprised of one female either leading or being chased by a group of males. It often appears that every male is competing with every other male for access to the female. Recently researchers have observed that male humpbacks may form coalitions, working together to corral the female so that one may have easier access to her.