Competition Heats Up

Aloha,

Guests joining us on Thursday’s Wake up With the Whales got to see the whole gamut of competitive activities. It was pretty windy out there, but Captain Baker found us a competitive pod of 4 adult humpbacks (no calf). While we were watching, two more males joined the fray. We saw at least a dozen breaches, and too many head lunges, pectoral slaps and tail lobs to count. We also saw a few peduncle throws from the competing males (either that, or the peduncle throws were from the female trying to express her excitement…or irritation….while all this was going on, it was difficult to keep track of who was being chased and who was doing the chasing). We were able to keep up with this group on a parallel path for more than 45 minutes before we finally had to turn and head back to the bay. With less than a week left for our Whale Watch Season, we’re really treasuring these moments. And we’re pretty sure that the Humpbacks still remaining around Hawaii are treasuring every encounter they’re having with each other too!
Mahalo and have a great weekend. I’ll send a recap of the weekend’s sightings on Monday.
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: The barnacles called “Coronula diadema” live only on Humpback Whales, and they seem to prefer to live on areas of the whale where the water flow is consistent (chin and fins). Though researchers aren’t completely sure how the barnacle can even find a whale to live on, there is some speculation that because the barnacles are spawning during the winter in Hawaii, the whales here are swimming in “barnacle larvae soup”. When a whale swims by, those “baby” barnacles chemically sense it, and hop on where ever they can. They use their antennae as “feet’ and walk around the whale till they find a suitable spot (which can take quite a while… if the barnacle were the size of a person, the whale would be 20 miles long). Once they find a spot they like, they flip over and produce tube-shaped cavities in their shells that actually draw in prongs of growing whale skin, holding their position on the whale for life.

Spinners Spin but Humpbacks Glow

Aloha,

We had a beautiful day on the water on Monday…with the trade winds blowing, we were not only able to see all the mountains on our island but Haleakala too! Both of our morning cruises departed from Kawaihae on Alala, and though they were back to back, we had different experiences on each. Guests joining us on the Wake up With the Whales Cruise were greeted with a very active, curious, and playful pod of Spinner Dolphins, As soon as this pod heard our boat, they made a bee-line towards us and spend considerable time jumping, spinning, and riding our bow wake. After playing with them for awhile, we headed towards some spouts off in the distance. These turned out to be from a very quiet Mom and Baby humpback, who were just breathing and resting on the surface. Though we didn’t approach them closer than 100 yards, they spent considerable time on the surface, so we all got a good look at them.

On our 10:00 Signature Whale Watch, we headed out towards where we had left our Mom and baby…but on the way there,  found a different Mom and calf. We sat and watched baby as he swam a complete circle on the surface…and then got to see Mom swim a complete circle around her baby. These two were accompanied by an escort – and all three of them had pure white pectoral fins that just glowed with that beautiful luminescent turquoise color whenever the whales were near the surface. After watching this trio for awhile, we saw some big Humpbacks breach a little further out, so we headed that way. By the time we got there they were done breaching, but they both surfaced giving us a good view of them. And finally, on our way back into the harbor, we found one more Mom/baby pod. The little guy was doing everything he could to breach, and as we watched, he almost was able to pull it off – more of a flop than a breach, but we though we couldn’t agree what to call what we we seeing, we all had to agree it was very cute!
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Humpback whales, and actually all Cetaceans, have a highly developed sense of touch. We know this because they have a lot of nerve endings right beneath their skin, and there’s a lot of blood flow to the nerve endings. Plus they touch each other a lot. Also, when researchers take pencil-eraser sized plugs of skin and blubber from whales to study their DNA (and when you consider the size of the whale, that’s a pretty insignificant amount of skin), they report seeing the whales flinch.

Dolphins and Humpbacks Together

Aloha,

Guests joining us on our Wednesday 10:00 Signature Cruise from Kawaihae got to see a variety of cetaceans. Our first sighting was of a lone humpback who spouted and then took a 20 minute breath-hold dive. After watching him surface again, we headed north and found two “smallish” humpbacks. They also were on long breath hold dives – 17 minutes. But after seeing them dive the first time, a pod of very active spinner dolphins came over to check us out. While they were jumping and spinning and leaping, the Humpbacks surfaced again (maybe to see what all the excitement was about?). We watched them amongst the dolphins…and then when they dove we watched the dolphins play all around us again. On our way back to the harbor, most of us got to see our lone whale from the beginning of the charter breach…and then we all saw another pod of playful spinner dolphins.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day
ocean, and comes up to breathe every couple of minutes. We call this behavior “logging’ as the whale looks a lot like a floating log.

Radical New Music Courtesy of Humpbacks

Aloha,

Our March 30th Whale Watch Cruises were really spectacular. On our 8:00 Wake Up with the Whales Cruise, we saw 8 different humpbacks within about 1000 yards of us. But while we were sitting, watching them in all directions, we heard sounds echoing up through the hulls, There was a singer very close by — so close we didn’t even need to deploy our hydrophone to hear him. But of course once we listened without the hydrophone, we wanted to hear the sounds even more clearly, so we dropped our microphone and this is what we heard: CLICK HERE. Very unique sounds…more like an aviary than a whale…While we were listening, two very big mature whales surfaced right next to the boat and swam around us — not once, but twice!
On our 10:00 Signature Whale Watch on Alala, as soon as we left the harbor, we saw some splashes to the south. So we took a turn to the left and found a pod of Spinner Dolphins. This pod was moving south fairly quickly and directly. They didn’t come to the boat, but we all saw lots of jumps and spins from this very active pod. After watching them for awhile, we saw the tell-tale spouts of Humpbacks, so we headed back north to what we thought was a pod of Mom and baby. Eventually, we figured out there were three whales in the pod when the escort surfaced too. As we watched, baby cycled between periods of activity and periods of quiet. While he was active we saw lots of tail lobs and little peduncle throws…and then he would tire out and dive down to mom. We got to see the flukes from all three of these whales — Mom and the Escort had strikingly white flukes, and baby had a definite black border around the white on his flukes. We finally had to turn back and head towards the harbor…that’s when baby started breaching and breaching and breaching.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: To our untrained ears, the sounds we hear from our hydrophones sound pretty random though we have noticed the lack of certain phrases this year that we heard fairly often last year. According to a paper published in the journal Current Biology, it turns out that our ears aren’t so untrained after all. Researchers have documented that the Humpback songs in the South Pacific are actually changing really quickly. Over the last decade, completely new song themes are appearing within a season. The researchers compared the radical evolution of the Humpbacks’ songs to human musical composition, suggesting that the themes are so novel; it’s as if whole new human musical genres were appearing that no one had ever heard just a few years ago — similar to the emergence of rockabilly in the 1950’s or hip hop in the 1970’s.

Breaching all Day

Aloha,

Our Tuesday morning started off pretty calmly. We operated our our Wake Up with the Whales Cruise on Alala from Kawaihae, and saw spouts from 5 different Humpbacks. One of them gave us a tail lob right near the boat. We got back to the harbor at 10:00, picked up some more guests and went right back out again. This time we saw a lot more…for about 15 minutes we watched a couple of adult humpbacks pec slapping and tail lobbing. We also got to see baby trying out his skills with some mini tail-lobs. And then for a grand finale, we saw both Mom and baby breach! And the highlight of our Whales and Cocktails was watching an adult humpback breach.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: In 1919, R.G. Meyers, who was working towards his PhD in Chemistry at Stanford University, conducted a chemical analysis of Humpback whale blood collected from the thoracic cavity of a whale killed in Monterey Bay. He found that the Humpback’s total cholesterol level was similar to a healthy human’s, but the glucose level was 4 times what’s considered a “healthy” level for a human. Since there are not a lot of carbohydrates in a Humpback’s diet, a Humpback’s liver and pancreas must work differently than ours.

When getting Mugged is a Good Thing

Aloha,

We took out two boats for our Wake up with the Whales Cruise on Thursday. Guests aboard Seasmoke found ourselves the object of attention for our favorite pod — Mom and Baby. These two whales stayed with us for over an hour, diving and surfacing right next to the boat, We wore ourselves out running from bow to stern, port to starboard, watching the whales as they watched us. We loved seeing them right below the surface of the water  – their white pec fins glowing with that incredible turquoise color as they reflected through the water, and we loved looking into their eyes when they surfaced. Watching baby sit on Mom’s rostrum was a real treat too! When we were able to take our eyes away from them, we also saw tail lobs and breaches all around us from other whales.
And though Manu Iwa departed from the same location at the same time, guests aboard that boat had a slightly different experience – an experience that can be summed up in just one word, “Breach”! A pod of Mom and baby found the boat quickly and baby breached so many times that we all lost count. Then we saw a sub-adult breach right next to us…then we saw a fully grown adult Humpback breach right next to us!
On the 10:00 Signature Whale Watch Cruise from Kawaihae we were astounded by the absence of activity. Though we did see a Humpback surface several times, and some of us saw a breach, it really wasn’t the experience we want to give our guests so Captain Kino called it a “Fluke” and we invited our guests to join us again on another cruise for free. So…did the Humpbacks move away from the area because of the tiger shark that had been seen at Hapuna Beach? Did the low flying helicopters that were out looking for the shark alter the behavior of the Humpbacks? We don’t know for sure, but it’s only the third week of March, so we know there are still lots of Humpbacks visiting the area.
Have a great weekend – I’ll send out my next report on Monday,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Researchers taking DNA samples from the whales take pencil eraser sized plugs of skin and blubber by using a dart tip on the end of an arrow propelled by an air-rifle or crossbow. Tissue samples are used to ascertain a wide variety of information including sex, age, hormone levels, dietary composition, stress levels, contaminant levels, and the presence of viral or bacterial diseases among other things.

 

Surprised by a Breach

Aloha,

Even after 3 decades of running Whale Watch Cruises, we still find ourselves surprised and astounded by the varieties of behaviors we see from the Humpbacks along our coastline. Case in point: on Wednesday’s Signature 10:00 Whale Watch, we were paralleling a competitive pod of 6 or 7 whales. Most of the time, this group was underwater doing whatever it is the Humpbacks do to compete under there. We watched them surface several times and got to see a few tail lobs, and some bubble blowing, and we got to hear and see some powerful spouts. This went on for quite a while, when seemingly without any prompting, a very large Humpback breached fully out of the water between 50 and 100 yards from our boat. Those of us who were looking in the correct direction shouted when we saw the whale’s rostrum coming up…and that allowed a bunch of the rest of us to witness most of the breach. We couldn’t decide if it looked like it was happening in slow motion (or maybe it was due merely to the whale’s size), but from start to finish, that breach seemed to last a very long time. And that’s why we love Whale Watching…you just never know what you’ll see!
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: In August 2008, the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) changed the status of the Humpback Whale from “Vulnerable” to “Least Concern” reflecting the general upward trend of population levels. According to IUCN standards, animal populations in the “Least Concern” category are at a low risk for extinction. The IUCN classifies the status of humans in the same category.

Great Weather to Whale Watch

Aloha,

We had a lot of fun on our Tuesday Whale Watch Cruises. The weather was great, and we ran too many cruises to tell you what we saw on each…but suffice it to say, there was a lot of action. Pods of Mom and baby seemed to gravitate towards our idling boats all day. We all saw competitive pods charging around on the surface. As usual with a competitive pod, there was lots of head lunging and throat inflation to see, and lots of trumpeting to hear. When we deployed our hydrophone throughout the day, we got to enjoy a veritable symphony of whale songs. Most of the whales we were listening to were not extremely close, but once in awhile we were able to pick out a singer nearby. We did see breaching, tail lobbing, and peduncle throws throughout the day from both adult humpbacks and calves.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Researchers studying the totally geographically isolated Arabian Sea Humpbacks have recently noted that these Humpbacks sing songs that are a whole level less complex than the songs Humpbacks in every other ocean of the world sing. Arabian Humpback songs are comprised of notes, making phrases, which are repeated in the same order, while other Humpbacks group the phrases into themes and the repeated themes comprise the song. If I’m interpreting this correctly, the Arabian Humpbacks’ version of say “Old McDonald Had a Farm” would feature only one farm animal, and they’d be singing about that one animal over and over and over. Humpbacks elsewhere would be able to use the structured verse to sing about lots of different animals on the farm…If there are any music theorists out there please help me out.

Unusual Dolphin Joins Humpbacks

Aloha,

Our Friday the 13th started off really lucky for guests on the Wake Up with the Whales Cruise. Not only did we see 3 different cow/calf/escort pods, but we got to see a double breach within about 100 feet of the boat. On the 10:00 Cruise from Kawaihae, we watched a competitive pod dissolve before our eyes. We stayed with the losing male for awhile, watching him tail lob more than 40 times. Then we went in search of the Mom/Baby and winning escort. We found them right on the wind line, and as soon as the wind moved in, the baby went crazy – breaching more than 30 times.
On Saturday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise, we found a couple different Mom/Baby/Escort pods. The first pod was swimming quietly and we didn’t want to disturb them, so we cruised past them to another pod where a baby was breaching repetitively. When we deployed the hydrophone on this cruise, we heard some very loud and clear sounds, so we know there was a lot going on below the surface too. On our Whales and Cocktails Cruise, Captain Mark found a large competitive pod of 8 or 9 whales (difficult to count) just south of Anaeho’omalu Bay. Before we got to them, we saw a lot of breaching going on, and while we watched, the pod split into two pods — half of whom stayed right around our boat, lunging and blowing bubbles for more than 30 minutes.
On Sunday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise, we saw 5 different Cow/Calf pods, lots of peduncle throws and lots of pec slaps. The highlight of the cruise though was watching an adult humpback breach fully out of the water about 150 feet behind our idling boat. On the 10:00 Whale Watch from Kawaihae, Captain Ryan reports an unusual sighting of a dolphin accompanying Mom Humpback and her calf just outside the break wall at the harbor. This lone dolphin was acting just like a whale, diving and surfacing in conjunction with the Humpbacks. The dolphin looked a lot like a Spinner, but his dorsal fin was a bit more hooked — maybe a juvenile Bottlenose? Guests got to watch this unusual trio for the entire duration of the trip…at one point, actually seeing all three sound together. Mom didn’t seem bothered by the dolphin’s presence, allowing her calf to interact with him…and even when another small competitive pod showed up and seemed to veer the dolphin away from Mom and her baby, the dolphin returned as soon as they left. As soon as I get a photo from Captain Ryan f this unusual dolphin, I’ll post it.
Hope your weekend was as great as ours!
Claire
 
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: When we say we heard LOUD singing, just how loud do we mean? Well, Humpback whales have been recorded producing sounds at around 185 decibels. Because the decibel scales use different references for sounds underwater than through the air, that’s the equivalent of about 123 decibels for us on the surface…which is as loud as the amplified music at a rock concert when you’re standing directly in front of a tower of speakers.

Rain Doesn’t Bother Whales- They’re Wet Anyway!

Aloha,

How does that song go??? “Oh the weather outside was frightful, but the whales were just delightful…” Well, maybe that’s not the exact song, but it sure describes our Wednesday morning Whale Watch Cruise. On the Wake up With the Whales guests saw more than 15 whales and pretty much every surface behavior in the book except for a spyhop. At one point, Captain Will had the boat idling and glanced at the depth finder exclaiming “There are whales RIGHT under the boat”! We barely had time to react before 4 big adult humpbacks surfaced right next to us! We also got to see a big whale breach just 150 yards from us, and lost count watching another humpback tail lob repetitively in front of the Mauna Lani. But it wasn’t all adult humpbacks who were putting on a show…we saw 3 different Mom/Baby/Escort pods too, and each of these calves were joining in on the excitement.On the 10:00 Cruise from Kawaihae, guests saw 4 different competitive pods. These whales were acting pretty aggressively towards each other — we got to see lots of head lunges, peduncle throws, and bubble streams. We also had a few close encounters with whales surfacing just 100 feet from our idling boat. And though it was still drizzling at 3:00 pm, guests on our Whales and Cocktails Cruise were treated to quite the experience. There were whales spouting in every direction. We were mugged twice — the first time by a pod of adult whales, and the second time by a very curious calf and his mom. Baby circled us several times and even breached twice just 30 feet from our bow.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: According to research conducted in Japan, the peak estrus period for Humpbacks (i.e. when females are in heat) overall, is between the end of January and the end of February, but the peak estrus period for females with a calf appears to be several weeks later. Our frequent observations of pods of Mom and Baby who are accompanied by an escort at that time of year seem to support the validity of these findings. Although, we must take into account that many mature females without calves have already left Hawaii by the beginning of March, so perhaps the males are just accompanying any female they can find.