Aloha,
Aloha,
Aloha,
Aloha,
Aloha,
We had an outstanding time on our Wake Up with the Whales Cruise on Thursday. We were barely outside of the bay when we found a very active competitive pod of 5 whales. These humpbacks stayed with us for over an hour, pec slapping, head lunging and peduncle throwing all around us. That was really fun to watch, but then the pod decided to dive underneath us. We couldn’t believe our luck when we got our first glimpse of them below the boat…but it got better. These whales must have found us a good diversion (or maybe they were using us in ways we don’t quite understand) because they mugged us for more than 20 minutes. Eventually they surfaced far enough away that we could maneuver away and head back to the bay. On the way back, a Mom/Baby pod surfaced just over 100 yards from us. Classic.By the afternoon, the action had calmed down quite a bit but we saw more than 20 humpbacks on our Whales and Cocktails Cruise including 3 Mom/Baby/Escort pods. We got some good fluke sightings too.
Mahalo and have a great weekend. I’ll send a recap of the weekend’s events on Monday.
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day…just in time for Valentine’s Day! A Humpback Whale has a big heart. An 80,000 pound whale’s heart averages just over 400 pounds, and according to measurements made by the Nelson Institute of Marine Research, beats an average of somewhere between 10 and 30 times per minute.
Aloha,
Aloha,
Aloha,
Aloha,
Aloha,
It was a windy day on the water on Wednesday, so we weren’t able to run most of our cruises, but guests joining us on our 8:00 Wake Up with the Whales had a great time watching a baby breach. Those calves always look so cute and uncoordinated to us. We also saw another Mom/Baby pod, and 8 or 9 other adult Humpbacks
On our 10:00 Cruise from Kawaihae we got to witness a wide variety of behaviors. Just out of the harbor we encountered a sub-adult humpback who was kind of curious about us. This whale spent some time checking us out as we all got a good view of him (or her — we couldn’t tell). This whale was joined by another whale and they must have felt a little bit of animosity towards each other because one of them started peduncle throwing. Later in the cruise we got to see 6 consecutive breaches — some by Mom, and some by her calf. We also saw lots of spouts and flukes of whales close to the shoreline…and lots more breaching by whales out to sea in the wind.