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Monthly Archives: March 2015
In the Humpback World, Who Chooses Who?
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Rain Doesn’t Bother Whales- They’re Wet Anyway!
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Humpbacks Celebrate All Day
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Baby Whale Plays with Mom
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Babies Steal the Show all Weekend Long
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found this duo just outside of Anaeho’omalu Bay on Friday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise, and paralleled them for an hour and a half as they traveled north to Honoko’opae Bay (between the Hilton and the Mauna Lani). Baby was very interested in us, swimming around us and under us, and even breaching 5 or 6 times right next to the boat. We never did see Mom breach, but she let her baby explore us to his little heart’s content.
Baby Whales Steal the Show
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Breaching in the Rain
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Baby, Baby, Baby!
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Mottled Whale
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We also saw a lot of other spouts and tails from cruising adult Humpbacks. And we weren’t even out of the harbor on our 10:00 Signature Whale Watch when a guest yelled “Dolphins! Twelve o’Clock!” We soon found ourselves surrounded by a pod of 100+ very active Spinner Dolphins. We saw lots of babies jumping and spinning along with the adults, and as usual with a pod of Spinners, a bunch of them took turns playing in our bow wake. After watching them for awhile, we turned south towards a couple of Humpback spouts, but before we could go even 200 yards, a sub-adult Humpback surfaced right next to us. This guy was only about 25 feet long and had mottled skin (covered in white spots). We thought we saw the last of him when he took a dive…but he decided to stay with us, paralleling us for more than 40 minutes — always surfacing on our port side, taking 3 breaths and diving again. After watching him for awhile (and trying to determine why his skin was spotted), we stopped to deploy our hydrophone and got to listen to some very clear songs. Finally, on our way in again, we saw spouts and dives from 4 more pods of adult Humpbacks — two pods of two and two pods of 4. And on the Whales and Cocktails Cruise, we spent the first 45 minutes or so with a competitive pod of 5 whales that were heading north. We saw lots of lunging and heard lots of trumpeting from them. Then, we turned back and spent the rest of the time bouncing between different Mom/baby/escort pods. There sure are a lot of humpbacks around this season!