Tag Archives: whale breach

Object of interest

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Aloha,

As is par for the course in the middle of January, we saw lots of Humpbacks all day on Tuesday. On the Wake Up with the Whales Cruise, the highlights included some pretty close-by pec slaps from one whale, lots of tail lobs from some other Humpbacks, and 4 different breaches. On our Whales and Cocktails Cruise, we found ourselves the object of interest for a competitive pod of 6 whales. We assume these whales are much more interested in each other than they are in us, but even though we stopped the boat, the pod swam to us and spent more than 30 minutes right around us before swimming off together. If there was a female in the pod (and of course, we couldn’t determine the whales’ genders for sure), was she using our boat as an obstacle between herself and those males? It sure looked like that to us!
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: When we watch a surface active competitive pod of whales, we assume it is comprised of one female either leading or being chased by a group of males. It often appears that every male is competing with every other male for access to the female. Recently researchers have observed that male humpbacks may form coalitions, working together to corral the female so that one may have easier access to her.

Breaches, Close Encounters and Maybe some Tutoring?

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Aloha,
After a weekend of very challenging weather, the ocean finally calmed down on Sunday and we had some great Humpback encounters! On our Breakfast with the Whales cruise, within minutes of leaving the bay we saw a breaching Humpback. As we cruised over to investigate, we all got to see multiple breaches from this whale. And then, much to our surprise two whales surfaced very close to us. We absolutely love it when we can see their white pec fins reflecting as turquoise when they’re just below the surface.
On our 10:00 Cruise, the same whales chose to come and investigate us further, surfacing and diving all around us. We even got to watch one whale swim right underneath us between the hulls! And if that weren’t exciting enough – we got to watch a Mom/Baby pod. Baby was breaching a lot, and Mom was breaching too – we’re never really sure if she’s teaching her baby how to breach or if she’s just excited (or slightly irritated) by all of baby’s activities. We also saw multiple pectoral slaps from another whale, and lots of flukes. There were whales pretty much every direction we looked!
Mahalo,
Claire
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Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: At birth, a Humpback whale calf weighs between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds which is between 3% and 4% of his Mom’s weight. Interestingly, at birth, human babies are proportionally larger, averaging  4%-5% of their Mom’s weight

Breaches in the Distance

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Aloha,
On yesterday’s Whales and Cocktails, guests saw two different Humpbacks – both adults (or sub-adults). We saw the spout from one of them…and the other breached. The breach was in the distance though, so we saw the splash better than we saw the whale! Since one of the theories about why Humpbacks breach is to communicate their location to other whales by creating that big splash, we figured that either the whale knew we were here and wanted us to know where he was, or that there were more whales in the vicinity that we didn’t see!
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: There are Humpback Whale populations in all the oceans of the world. The whales we see here each winter are part of the North Pacific population. “Our” whales feed in the waters of the Gulf of Alaska during the summer months. They swim the 3500 miles to Hawaii each year to calve in warm waters and to mate. Recent research suggests that “our” humpbacks are actually part of a distinct genetic population, and that there are a total of 5 distinct North Pacific Humpback populations. I’ll tell you more about that in a future email.

More Competition

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Aloha,
On Thursday’s Breakfast with the Whales Cruise, we had to work a bit to find the whales, but when we did…what a show! We started the cruise with sightings of two adult Humpbacks. We saw them spout a few times, and then saw their flukes as they began longer deeper dives…so we decided to move on. We motored around some more until we saw some splashes so we went to investigate. The splashes turned out to be from a pod of two competing whales. One was obviously chasing the other around, and the whale that was being chased appeared to be pretty irritated (or excited) because we got to see this whale breach SEVEN times about 100 yards from the boat!
Mahalo and have a wonderful weekend. I’ll send out the weekend recap on Monday. It’s hard to believe there are only 4 days of this fantastic 2012/2013 Humpback Whale Season left for us. Luckily for all us whale watchers, a lot of these whales don’t seem to know the season ends on Monday and seem to be sticking around!
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: As we bid “aloha” to the Humpbacks this season and eagerly await their return, we now know that not every Humpback who survives the summer season in Alaska will choose to migrate back next winter. Based on information compiled by our favorite researcher Chris Gabriele and her cohorts for the National Park Service in Glacier Bay and Icy Strait, at least 10 Humpbacks have been documented spending one winter off the coast of Sitka, and at least one off the coast of Juneau. We really don’t know how common this behavior is because almost no photographic identification research takes place in SE Alaska over the winter months (and who can blame the researchers when there are such great opportunities to conduct their studies in sunny Hawaii instead??!!).

Calves and their Moms

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Aloha,
We saw lots of whale calves on our Thursday Whale Watches. On the Breakfast with the Whales Cruise, guests spotted 15 whales within a 3 mile radius of the boat, but we spent most of our time with a pod of 3 – Mom/Baby/Escort. This pod circled our boat a whole bunch of times, so close that we could see the tubercles on their faces (but not so close that we could see the whiskers on their tubercles)! Baby spy-hopped a few times, clearly looking at us too. We also saw 2 breaches within 50 feet of the boat, and when we dropped the hydrophone we heard some great song snippets. On our 10:00 Whale Watch, we had a similar experience and spent most of our time with a different Mom/Baby/Escort pod. And on the Whales and Cocktails Cruise, we found a pretty calm pod of Mom/Baby/Escort. They were just slowly swimming and spouting, until all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the escort did a full breach about 100 yards from the boat! It was one of those rare times that everyone was looking in that direction, so everyone on board got to see it!
Mahalo and have a wonderful weekend. I’ll send the next report out on Monday.
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Being mammals, Humpback Whales nurse their calves with a very rich milk. Supposedly this milk tastes like sweet cod liver oil (though I haven’t tried it myself)!

April Whales Still Abundant

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Aloha,
The whales are still out there! On our Breakfast with the Whales Cruise, we saw whales in all directions…including pods of Mom/Baby/Escort and a couple of competitive pods. On our 10:00 Whale Watch we saw a total of 5 breaches including one from a calf…two of these breaches were about 100 yards from the boat creating HUGE splashes. We also saw several head lunges and a couple of peduncle throws. Twice we had whales come up less than 100 yards from us. And on the Whales and Cocktails Cruise, the babies were out in full force. We saw lots of pods of Mom/Baby and almost all of these pods were accompanied by an escort (we suspect that in the pods where we didn’t see an escort, he was still around, but just hadn’t surfaced).
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Since 1991, Whale Watchers off the coast of Australia have been seeing an all-white Humpback. They named him “Migaloo”, which is the aboriginal word for “white fella”, and DNA samples taken from skin he sloughed off into the water after a breach confirmed that he is, in fact, a male. He was believed to be the only all white Humpback in the world until September 2011, when an all white Humpback calf was spotted off of the Australian Coast. Whale watchers named him “Migaloo Jr”, and researchers are trying to determine if this little calf is related to Migaloo Senior. Up until very recently, researchers assumed that Migaloo was a true albino whale, but now he’s considered to be “hypo-pigmented” since they aren’t totally sure he produces absolutely no pigment (his eyes may have color). And yes…Migaloo does have problems with the sun. Whale Watchers in Australia have noted the poor guy does get quite the sunburn. And just this past November, another white Humpback was spotted off the coast of Norway.

Mugged Again

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Aloha,
Thursday’s Breakfast with the Whales was a LOT of fun. We’re still seeing lots of blows in all directions, and we’re still seeing lots of calves. On this trip we found 3 different Mom/Calf pods including one pod with a very, very small calf. This pod spent a good 15 minutes right next to our boat. We all got to watch baby rolling around and off of mom’s head (which must be a pretty fun game if you’re a baby whale). We also saw quite a bit of Mom, until she decided to dive under her baby…and then surprise all of us with 2 complete breaches about 15 yards from the boat! When we deployed the hydrophone, we heard some very clear and loud singing. We also saw a lot of other breaches somewhat further away from the boat. The rest of the day was equally great, with lots of blows, fluke dives, Mom/Calf/Escort pods and competitive pods. We did see some pec slaps and head lunges from one very active calf, and some breaches from a couple of adults. We also saw peduncle throws and tail lobs from some competitive adults.
Mahalo and have a great weekend! I’ll send out a weekend recap on Monday.
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Being mammals, Humpbacks have belly buttons – in case you’re wondering….they’re “innies”.

Breach! Breach!

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Aloha,
On Friday’s Breakfast with the Whales Cruise, we saw a couple of different Mom/Baby/Escort pods. Lately, we’ve been noticing that our Mom whales have been allowing their curious calves to approach the boat for an investigation, and that’s exactly what happened today. We had two close encounters from two different calves…of course where the calf goes, Mom is close to follow, and each Mom let her calf hang out with us for a little while. We also found a competitive pod with 2 escorts, a Mom, and her calf. One of the escorts in this pod was acting pretty aggressively with lots of trumpeting. There were too many breaches, tail lobs, head lunges and peduncle throws from this pod to even keep track. We went back out again from
10:00 – 12:30, and from 12:30 – 2:30. During the course of these two trips we saw more than 35 Humpbacks. On the first trip, we saw one Mom/Baby pod who did come right up to the boat. We also saw quite a bit of tail lobbing and a few peduncle throws, and for the grand finale…a full breach very close by. On the second trip, the whales were a little quieter, but we did get to see another close-by breach.
Mahalo and have a great weekend. I’ll send out the weekend recap on Monday.
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: According to researchers, the sleep process for a Humpback is most likely very similar to how their little toothed cousins, the dolphins, sleep. EEG readings from sleeping bottlenose dolphins show that the dolphins shut down half their brains at a time to rest. The active half presumably is monitoring breathing and perhaps scanning the surroundings for predators. Bottlenose dolphins sleep approximately 33% of the day, but stay asleep for only a couple of hours at a time.

Young Calves and Lots of Escorts

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Aloha,

We started our weekend with some strange stormy weather on Friday. On our Breakfast with the Whales Cruise, we spent most of our time with a Mom/Baby/Escort pod. Baby led Mom right up to the boat a few times, and though the baby seemed pretty big and had a fairly straight dorsal fin (indicating he was not a new-born) both Mom and the Escort were fairly small (by Humpback standards), suggesting to us that they were both fairly young. We did see some head lunging about 800 yards from us too. On the 10:00 Whale Watch, we saw 15 different Humpbacks, and 4 different Mom/Baby pods.
On Saturday’s Breakfast With the Whales we saw every behavior we could hope for on a whale watch including multiple breaches from a very energetic calf, adult tail lobs and peduncle throws, pec slaps, and even some adult breaches!
And on Sunday’s Breakfast with the Whales, we found 3 different Mom/Baby/Escort pods, including one with a very, very small calf. Each of these pods decided to swing by the boat, so we had some great close encounters. We also saw a double breach from two adult whales (always exciting) and towards the end of the cruise we found a competitive pod who were doing a lot of trumpeting, head lunges and bubble blowing beneath the surface. At one point we were downwind from a spout and it really smelled kind of horrible. We finished the weekend of Whale Watching with a Whales and Cocktail Cruise from Anaeho’omalu Bay. We got to see several Mom/Calf pods, and they got to see us too (we had lots of close encounters). We also saw a lot of tail lobbing, breaching, and peduncle throws. And when we dropped our hydrophone into the water, we were surprised by the clarity of the songs we heard. Oh…and at the end of the day, the sun came out again, making for a beautiful end to the weekend.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale 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 this time of year seem to support the validity of these findings.