Aloha,

Our last weekend of the whale watch season started off well. On Friday’s Breakfast with the Whales Cruise, our onboard naturalist Mike reports seeing 10 or 12 different Humpbacks throughout the morning. We saw 2 different pods of Mom/Baby, and one of these pods also had an escort with them. It’s possible the other pod did too, but since the escorts don’t surface nearly as often as baby and Mom, we weren’t sure. We also dropped the hydrophone and heard a lot of singing…so there are definitely quite a few whales still around Hawaii. On Saturday’s Breakfast with the Whales Cruise, we spent most of our time watching two very calm whales swimming and spouting. But on the Whales and Cocktails we got to see a little competition. We found a pod of Mom, Baby and two escorts. It was easy to tell the two escorts apart, because when they showed their flukes, one was almost all black, and the other all white. All the chasing around they were doing got the baby excited, and we got to see him breach right next to the boat!  We also saw a double breach from two adults a bit further out. Sunday’s Whale Watches were pretty quiet – but we did see some spouts and a few tails. On our 10:00 Whale Watch, most of the action was pretty far away, so even though a few whales were spotted, Captain Paul decided to invite our guests to come out with us again for our last day of whale watching this season.

Mahalo…and I’ll send out my final whale report for the 2012/2013 season tomorrow!

Claire

Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: New research results released just his year (conducted by Dr. Adam Pack and his associates) documents that the largest female Humpbacks will associate almost exclusively with the largest males.  The largest males however were much less discriminating — they were seen associating with females of all sizes. And the smaller males have been seen only associating with smaller females. who may not have even reached sexual maturity. So yes…. size does matter (at least for the female humpbacks)!