Humpback Changes Her Mind

Aloha,

We took out two boats for Thursday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruises. On Seasmoke, we got to watch a humpback change her mind about us. In the beginning of the cruise, we saw a couple of spouts and headed out towards a Cow/Calf pod. When we got in the vicinity and stopped the boat, baby came right over to us…followed by Mom. They stayed with us for 20 minutes, mugging us. Mom finally had enough of it, and did a peduncle throw towards the boat, pushing baby away with her head. We stayed in the area, and about 20 minutes later, they both surfaced right next to us (apparently she thought we were ok again) and then swam quietly past. On the way back to the bay we got to see a couple of breaches from other whales. Guests joining us on Manu Iwa got to see spouts from 7 different whales. We spend a good 15 minutes watching a Mom and her calf resting quietly on the surface. We also had a relatively close encounter when a BIG lone whale surfaced about 50 yards off our bow. The ocean was really calm, allowing us to deploy our hydrophone and listen to quite a few singers fairly close by. On our 10:00 Signature Whale Watch from Kawaihae we got to watch a very active calf. This little guy breached so many times right near the boat that we lost count. Mom let him come right over to us (we almost could have touched him he was so close).
Have a wonderful weekend. I’ll be sending out the weekend recap on Monday.
Mahalo,
Claire

Hum pback Breach

This image is courtesy of guest Stephanie Collier from her March 29th Whale Watch Cruise with us

Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: You probably already know this, but Humpback Whales don’t have teeth – they have baleen. What you might not already know is that Humpbacks have approximately 270 – 400 pairs of baleen plates hanging from the top palate of their mouths ranging in length from a foot to about 3 feet long. Where the baleen is attached to the palate, it feels like a horse’s hoof — but it fringes out to form dense mats allowing the whale to “strain the soup of the ocean” when feeding. Humpback baleen is black.

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