Humpbacks Singing LIVE

Aloha,

Our week started out really fun. On Monday’s Wake Up with the Whales, we must have seen spouts from at least 2 dozen different whales — maybe more. We saw two different competitive pods of 4 whales each charging around on the surface about a mile from us…and even had one competitive pod duck under the boat. But the highlight of the day was the Humpback who decided to spend 15 minutes underneath us blowing bubbles. We know that a Humpback in  a competitive pod will often blow streams of bubbles through his blowholes and mouth, most likely to disrupt the vision of the whales chasing behind him. And researchers have even seen bubbles coming out of – to put it delicately – the other end of the whale. Our bubble blower wasn’t surrounded by other whales at the time, so we’re not quite sure what he was doing underneath us, but it sure was amazing to see! And on the Whales and Cocktails Cruise, besides seeing a lot of activity, we heard a lot too…listen to this
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Whale Fact of the Day: Ok…so I know this fact isn’t about Humpbacks, but it is oddly interesting to me. Researchers have observed schools of herring, while being pursued by orcas (killer whales), generating extensive gas bubble releases from their anuses (flatulence). Due to the density difference of these bubbles compared to the surrounding sea water, these researchers theorize that the herring gas creates a barrier disrupting the echolocation abilities of the orca,allowing the herring to escape predation. Something to consider if you ever find yourself being chased around the ocean by an orca…

Breach…and this time, we all saw it!

Aloha,

Our Wednesday 10:00 Signature Whale Watch allowed us to see two spectacular sights. First, we got to see a very large Humpback, just hanging at the surface for awhile. He  (or she — we weren’t sure) was very recognizable because of the large white racing stripe on his dorsal fin which was about a foot long and maybe a hand’s width wide. This whale spent a considerable time just sort of resting and spouting and finally dove, never to be seen by us again. And then…on the way back to the harbor, we were cruising along looking in all directions when a smaller humpback surfaced off our port bow. Of course we slowed to an idle and watched this guy spout a few times and dive. We figured that would be the last we’d see of him but he surprised us all by doing a full-on breach right in front of us. This whale was totally out of the water…tail and all…and unlike those breaches that happen far from us, everyone was looking in the right direction to see it! On our Whales and Cocktails Cruise, Captain Kealohi reports seeing a couple of different pods of spouting whales. These whales also appeared to be relaxing — we didn’t see any aggressive surface activity — but when we lowered our hydrophone, we heard some singing so we know those male humpbacks are arriving.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: All whales, regardless of species, age, or gender make noises. Only Humpback whales sing an organized song…and only male Humpbacks sing. We used to believe that the males only “sing” when they are in the warmer waters where they mate, though now that we’re listening more closely, we have heard the males singing a bit in their colder feeding waters (mostly at the end of feeding season prior to the beginning of the migration). So, is the male Humpback singing a mating song? Researchers have observed that female whales will not approach a singing male, so if this is a mating song, it seems to be a pretty ineffective one.

Chicken Skin

Aloha,

Tuesday started off very nicely for us and our guests. We saw 6 different humpbacks during our Wake Up with the Whales Cruise. 4 of them were hanging out together. We didn’t see any wild surface activity from any of these whales, so maybe they were enjoying the calm winds and sea conditions as much as we were. On our 10:00 Whale Watch out of Kawaihae, we got to see 5 different pods of two whales. We paralleled one pod for awhile keeping a respectable 200 yards away for most of the cruise, and then the pod decided to swim over to check us out. There’s something so incredible about getting to hear a whale spout — still gives us chicken skin! Finally, on our Whales and Cocktails Cruise, we saw 8 different whales, all in pods of two. One pod found us interesting enough to swing by for a closer look. We also saw a few tail lobs from some other Humpbacks, and when we lowered the hydrophone we got to hear some clear, but not real loud, singing.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: In 1966, the International Whaling Commission placed humpbacks under protection in the North Pacific. In the United States, the National Marine Fisheries Service enforces regulations designed to protect humpbacks as designated by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Basically, vessels, swimmers and divers cannot approach a humpback within 100 yards, herd or drive them from any distance, separate a cow from her calf, or “substantially disrupt the normal activities of a humpback”. Aircraft must stay more than 1000 feet above the whales.

A Little Song, A Little Dance

Aloha,

The water conditions were “super smooth” for Wednesday’s 10:00 Whale Watch, allowing for some great sightings from Alala. Guests aboard the cruise got to watch 3 different Humpbacks. One of them breached 3 times just about 400 yards from us. We also got some good tail shots, as these whales dove right near us. And when we deployed our hydrophone, the sounds we heard were very clear…leading us to believe that those male Humpbacks have begun to make their arrivals already.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback 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 3000 miles to Hawaii each year to calve in warm waters (and to mate).

Singing Humpbacks

Aloha, Our last weekend of whale watching started out great. On Friday’s Breakfast with the Whales, we spent the whole cruise about a mile off shore of Buddha Point (at the Hilton Waikoloa Village). We had a singer very close by – so close that we could hear his song reverberating through the hulls of the boat without dropping the hydrophone. Of course we wanted to see what it would sound like when we did drop the microphone. It was incredible.click here and you can hear it too. We also got to watch a couple of whales swim under us (visibility was excellent – we could see them 60 feet below us). Throughout the course of this cruise, we saw 4 different Humpbacks multiple times. The wind shut us out on Sunday, but we did see some splashing going on far out to sea while we were waiting on shore. We’ll be running Whale Watches thru Tuesday, so you still have time to join us this season! 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. In November 2012, another white Humpback was spotted off the coast of Norway!

Still “Whale Soup” in Hawaiian Waters

Aloha,
The whales were out in force this weekend. On Friday’s afternoon Whale Watch on Seasmoke, guests saw 5 different Humpbacks. At first we just got to see some spouts, but when we got to the area where the spouts were, a lone adult surfaced about 50 yards from us turning out to sea. We thought that was kind of interesting — wondering what he was swimming away from and then a pod of two adult humpbacks surfaced right behind us. We saw dorsal fins, spouts, and flukes from all three of these whales. On our way back to the bay, we found another pod of two and just as I was explaining that we don’t always see a breach on every trip, one of the whales breached not once, but twice! On Friday’s Whales and Cocktails Cruise, we found a pod of 3 – Mom, baby and escort. This pod surfaced several times near us, and while we were watching them, we saw spouts from two more adult whales closer to shore.
Guests on Saturday’s Breakfast with the Whales Cruise used just one word to describe the trip: “AWESOME”. For almost the entire cruise, we were escorted by two big adult whales who decided to swim directly under us and along side. At one point one of them came between the hulls (we were adrift), and did a fluke dive right in front of the bow. Seasmoke is a pretty big catamaran – 58 feet long and 23 feet wide – but when that whale lifted his flukes right in front of us, we felt really, really small.
On Sunday’s Breakfast with the Whales, we saw a dozen different Humpbacks (which is a lot for this late in the season). We had one very close encounter, and several pretty close encounters with whales who were interested in us. We also got to see one head lunge. And on our Whales and Cocktails Cruise on Sunday, we saw 6 different Humpbacks, including one sub-adult who breached twice, and another bigger whale who tail lobbed a few times. When we deployed the hydrophone, we heard a Humpback symphony! And actually, three guests on board heard whale sounds after we had already pulled the hydrophone out of the water
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day According to research conducted by the Nelson Institute of Marine Research, a Humpback’s heart beats an average of 40bpm, but the whales do experience periods of tachycardia and bradycardia during dives.

Deeper Swims and Whales in Space

Aloha,
We’ve always wondered if the behaviors of the Humpbacks would be affected by events occurring across the ocean….so we were curious if the April 1st earthquake in Chile which spawned a very small tidal surge in this part of the Pacific would noticeably alter what we see the whales doing. On the cruises we ran today, we didn’t really see much difference in Humpback behavior. The Moms and calves we saw were all pretty mellow. If anything, the whales were further from shore today than they were the two days previous. But with the population of Humpbacks around Hawaii decreasing as the season ends, it’s really impossible for us to say if the ocean surge did encourage a deeper swim, or if it was just a coincidence. We did see a lot of flukes today, and also a lot of dorsal fins, but not many splashes at all. Our near-shore population seems more and more skewed to the Mom/Baby/Escort pods.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day:The haunting song of the Humpback has actually travelled beyond our oceans. In 1977, NASA launched two Voyager space crafts. Aboard each was a golden record with a collection of sights, sounds and greetings from Earth in 54 different human languages. These records also include greetings from Humpback whales! And that was just the first time the whales’ song travelled beyond our planet…On Earth Day (4/22) in 2005, a private organization called Deep Space Network broadcast a live feed from a hydrophone off the coast of Maui of the Humpbacks singing. They used a five meter parabolic dish antenna and broadcast the sounds about 18 trillion miles into deep space. So far, we haven’t gotten a response back…

Long Distance Humpback Swimming

Aloha, We ran 5 different Whale Watch Cruises on Thursday. Highlights included a very active pod of 3 on our 10:00 Whale Watch – mom, her baby, and an escort. The escort did multiple pec slaps, allowing us to really get an idea how big that pectoral fin actually is. Baby did his best to keep up with the adults as they moved pretty quickly down the coast. On the Private afternoon Whale Watch, we saw lots of different Humpbacks. They were mostly moving down the coast line, so we saw lots of spouts and lots of flukes. And on our Whales and Cocktails Cruise, the whales were pretty mellow. We saw lots of dorsal fins from the surfacing whales, allowing us a good view of the variation in size and shape of those fins. We also saw a lot of flukes as the whales began their longer deeper dives. When we deployed the hydrophone on this trip, we were able to hear many different voices, but none of the singers’ voices was distinct, leading us to believe that a lot of the activity was occurring further off shore. Mahalo and have a great weekend, Claire

Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: In Sept. 2013, Dianne Nyad completed a record breaking 110 mile swim from Cuba to Florida – but in the Humpback world, that’s nothing. Migration between Alaska and Hawaii is around 3500 miles. But Humpbacks can swim even further than that. In 2001, a Norwegian tourist snapped a photo of a female Humpback in breeding grounds off the coast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. When he found the photo again in 2010 and posted it, researchers were able to match the flukes to a photo they had taken of the SAME whale in breeding grounds off the coast of Brazil — which means she had swum more than 6000 miles! Researchers aren’t sure what motivated the whale to swim across the Atlantic– until this whale was identified in both places, it was assumed that Humpbacks only travelled across latitudes, not longitudes. Which just goes to show you…we still have a LOT to learn.

A Lot to Hear

Aloha,
Guests aboard Monday’s Breakfast with the Whales Cruise got some close up views of a couple different Mom/Baby pods when the little calves decided to get some close-up views of us! There was a lot of breaching and splashing to be seen too, but the surface-active whales stayed on the horizon. Right before we returned to the bay, we got an opportunity to deploy our hydrophone, and what we heard sounded like a symphony. There must have been two or three singers fairly close to us, but the in the background we could hear some really complex sounds, indicating a lot of activity within the range of the microphone. And consider this – even though our microphone picks up sounds from at least 5 miles away, researchers believe that whales can hear sounds from much further. So what we hear is just a fraction of what they hear…whales live in a noisy world rich with singing and vocalizing (for us, perhaps akin to living an entire life inside Aloha Stadium during the Pro Bowl).
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.

Cloud Cover Doesn’t Alter Activity Levels

Aloha,
Thursday morning we woke up to overcast skies, and on our 10:00 Whale Watch, one of the first questions a guest asked me was “What do the whales prefer? Sunshine or clouds?”. I’ve never read any research documenting surface activity levels based on cloud cover, but based on what we got to see on this cruise, I’d have to say the whales sure didn’t let the grey skies slow them down. We spent much of our time watching a competitive pod of 4 whales. The one in the lead (which we’re guessing was female) spent a lot of time at the surface pec slapping and tail lobbing. We got to see some great bubble trails from the primary escort (researchers suggest the primary escort blows bubbles as a way to mask the presence of the female from the males behind him), and a couple of times he lifted his head showing us an inflated throat (another aggressive move — inflation makes him look bigger to the other males). We also saw not one, not two, but 3 breaches from this pod…and all them were right in front of us. During the cruise, we also saw lots of other Humpbacks spouting, peduncle throwing (twice) and tail lobbing.
We went back out again at 12:30 with 50 keiki from Wai’aha School (and their parents and teachers). Though we were only on the dock for about 5 minutes between the trips, the weather changed entirely. The wind came up – and so did the whales! We saw lots of tail lobs and peduncle throws during this cruise. All told we saw more than two dozen whales. And when we deployed our hydrophone, we heard very loud clear songs.
On our Whales and Cocktails Cruise, not only were we visited by a Mom/Baby/Escort pod, but we got to watch a tail lob competition between two adult whales.
Mahalo, and have a great weekend,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: The smooth round flat spot we see on the water after a whale dives is called the “footprint”. Whalers thought it was caused by oil from the whale’s skin calming the surface of the water, but water samples have proven that theory to be false. When a whale dives (or kicks just below the surface) his flukes break the surface tension of the water and create a vertical wake, forming the circular footprint.