Tag Archives: humpback calf

Eating a Whale??

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Aloha,
We saw 10 different Humpbacks on our 10:00 Whale Watch on Tuesday. The first whale we saw was all by him (or her) self. We saw his all-black fluke a few times as he dove near us. We also found a pod of two wales south of the harbor — Mom and her very, very young calf. Not only was this calf really small, but her dorsal fin was totally bent over onto her back (when the baby is born, the dorsal is flattened so the baby can slide more easily out of the birth canal — researchers estimate that it takes about 6 weeks for the cartilage in the fin to stiffen up, allowing the dorsal fin to assume its “adult position”). We watched this pod for awhile, but since they were basically just swimming near the surface and breathing, we decided to give them their space. On the way back to the harbor, we saw spouts from 3 other pods of 2 or 3 whales. Considering that this was April 9th already, we’re still amazed at the number of sightings we’re having on our whale watches!
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day:In 1918, in effort to stockpile more beef, mutton and pork to send to the American troops fighting the 1st World War, the US government sponsored a luncheon at the American Museum of National History in New York featuring Humpback Whale meat. Several dignitaries were invited (including Admiral Peary) to feast on the menu created by the Head Chef of Delmonico’s, and were quoted saying the meat tasted like pot roast or venison. During the luncheon, the museum’s “reliable sources” reported that if all of the 7 operational whaling stations on the Pacific Coast began processing whale for food (instead of for fertilizer), more than 20 million pounds of whale meat could be distributed to the American public during the summer months alone at a cost of 12.5 cents/pound. The idea never really caught on with the American public though. 

Humpback Calf Adopts our Boat

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Aloha,
Guests aboard our 10:00 Whale Watch on Alala had an interesting experience on Tuesday.  Just as we left the harbor, we found a pod of Spinner Dolphins, which is always fun…but we continued south and found a Humpback calf at the surface. The calf approached the boat and actually started rubbing up against our hulls! It looked like he was scratching some itchy skin on his sides and on his back, and as we got a better and better look at him, we noticed a chunk missing from his dorsal fin, and all sorts of other scratches on his body. Our on-board naturalist Mike had just finished telling everyone about the importance of the relationship between baby and Mom…and when Mom didn’t surface for awhile, we started to get worried. This little calf stayed right alongside the boat for 20, then 30, then 35 minutes…and just when we were all about to cry, thinking the baby had been abandoned (and also about to call the folks at the Hawaii Islands Humpback National Marine Sanctuary to report the situation), Mom surfaced and led our little friend away! A very happy ending to a very interesting whale watch.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day:  According to research reported by the Keiki Kohola Project, the most common surface behavior observed of calves is “twirling” thru 360 degrees at the surface. These twirls often incorporate pec slaps and waves, and tail slaps and swishes. The researchers theorize all this movement not only helps the calves to improve their coordination, but also helps with the production of the intra-muscular oxygen-storing protein called myoglobin, allowing these calves the ability to stay underwater for increased amounts of time without breathing.

Cavorting Calves All Weekend Long

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Aloha,
We saw way too much this past weekend to recap all of it…so here’s a few highlights. On Friday’s Breakfast with the Whales, we saw 23 different whales, but really enjoyed watching a pod of 3 who seemed to be rolling around on top of each other. These whales came up vertically out of the water belly-to-belly a couple of times and though we didn’t see their eyes, the posture was very much like a spy hop. They also twisted and turned on the surface, and one of them pec slapped 13 times (we know that because one of our second-grade age guests kept the count for all of us). This whale also did a few complete roll-overs at the surface slapping each of his pec fins as he twisted. On the Alala on Friday, we ran two trips and saw 15 whales the first time, and 20 the second. The highlight of each of those trips was the close encounters with pods of Mom/Baby/Escort who decided to swim under our boat to check us out!
Saturday’s Whale Watches were much the same, with lots of energetic calves playing all around us. One of our favorite moments was watching a calf literally rolling around on top of Mom’s rostrum, slapping his pectoral fins (in delight?). We also loved watching a very young calf (with a completely bent over dorsal fin) attempting a couple of breaches and head lunges. We also had a couple of very close encounters with Mom/Baby/Escort pods. Each time, the baby seemed to lead the way over to us, and each time Mom actually kept herself between the baby and the escort, allowing baby to surface nearer to us. And on the Whales and Cocktails, we saw 25 different whales – no competitive pods, but plenty of Mom/Baby/Escort pods. We saw 20 adult breaches on this trip and 16 calf breaches along with lots of head lunges and tail lobs.
On Sunday’s Breakfast with the Whales, we saw 18 different Humpbacks and had an extremely close encounter with  a curious Humpback who swam around the boat a few times to take a look at us. And we ended the weekend with an adult Humpback breach about 70 yards from the boat. We also got to watch a baby breach over, and over, and over again…and to top it all off…we got mugged by another curious calf and her Mom.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: According to research reported by the Keiki Kohola project, very young calves (identified by the extent to which their fins are still furled from their time in utero) are much more active than older calves, swimming and twirling and kicking. These researchers theorize that all that exercise leads to the production of a necessary oxygen storing protein called “myoglobin”  in the whales’ muscles. One of the reasons adult humpbacks can hold their breath for 45 minutes is that they can store oxygen in their muscles (not just their lungs), and baby is training to be able to do that too.

Humpback Calves Play in the Sun

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Aloha,
Wednesday brought us a perfect day for sailing and whale watching. The only Whale Watch we ran was our Whales and Cocktails Cruise at 3:00 pm from Anaeho’omalu Bay on Seasmoke. We were treated to a whole bunch of really excited calves. We saw 6 different Mom/Baby pods – all within a mile of the bay. 4 of those pods were accompanied by at least one escort. The calves seemed to be enjoying the weather too as we saw one calf breach 14 times! Another calf breached 5 times, and head lunged twice. We also saw multiple tail lobs and pec slaps from an adult whale, and a couple of breaches and peduncle throws from one of the moms who was accompanied by (or more likely, bothered by) an escort. When we dropped the hydrophone in the water, we heard a whale “symphony”. Lots of whales were singing, though none was really very close to us. If you have access to facebook and want to see some photos from last night’s cruise, visit the Hawaii Ocean Sports fan page (type”Hawaii Ocean Sports” into the search box) – Captain Jeff shared some great shots with us.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: Humpback Whales play host to all kinds of other animals. Besides the barnacles we often see on the Humpbacks’ flukes and other skin surfaces, the whales can also carry tape worms, lung worms, sinus flukes, and whale lice (which are related to skeleton shrimp) among others. Not all of these parasites actually harm the whale (which means that technically, they can’t really all be considered“parasites”). In fact, the barnacles might actually benefit the male Humpbacks who appear to use the sharp edges of the shells (perhaps inadvertently) as weapons during competitive battles.

Crazy Calf and Lots of Surface Activity

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Aloha,
We had two really run Whale Watches on Thursday. On our 10:00 Whale Watch from Kawaihae, we saw a total of 8 whales — two of them were a mile or so away, but the other 6 put on quite a show. We watched a very active calf (think of any hyperactive 2 year old human kid you’ve ever met and you’ll get the idea). This baby pec slapped, double pec slapped and tail lobbed so many times that we had to stop counting at 20 for each activity and just enjoy his antics. And as if that weren’t enough, we also saw 3 full breaches just 25 yards from the boat from a couple of adults. An on our Whales and Cocktails Cruise, as we were making our way out of the bay in the beginning of the trip, we saw a full breach…then a bunch of tail lobs…then a bunch of peduncle throws about 500 yards from us. The whales kept this up…but they were moving at about the same speed we were, so we got to watch a lot more of this activity from about 500 yards away. We did have one close encounter on this trip, when a smaller whale surfaced just under 100 yards from us, blew, and dived again. In all, we saw 15 different whales on this trip.
Mahalo and have a wonderful weekend. I’ll send out a weekend recap report on Monday.
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day:  Why would a whale waste the energy to throw the back half of his or her body out of the water in a Peduncle Throw (sometimes repetitively)?? Since the whales aren’t telling, all we can do is try to interpret their behavior in terms of what else is going on in their lives at that moment. We know that Humpbacks very rarely eat while they’re in Hawaii, and since a Peduncle Throw is a huge expenditure of energy (if you don’t believe me, try it yourself next time you’re in the ocean), it’s got to be important to the whale. Throwing half of yourself out of the water results in a huge splash and might be a way to communicate location, health, excitement, aggression or irritation to near-by whales. Especially if the near-by whale happens to be so near that he gets landed upon!

Humpbacks Singing…and Lots of Calves

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Aloha,
Highlights from Monday’s Whale Watches included what our naturalist Meggan called, a “really exciting trip – best of the season so far”! On the Breakfast with the Whales Cruise, guests saw 6 Humpbacks, including a Mom and her little calf…we also saw a few breaches – not real close, but close enough that it made for a huge splash! When we dropped the hydrophone in the water we heard some incredible singing too (if you have access to Facebook and want to hear a clip, we put a link to a snippet Hawaii Ocean Sports fan page). And Alala had a private Whale Watch from 8:00 – 10:00. Guests aboard that boat saw 7 whales including a pretty quiet Mom and calf. They also saw a long-distance breach, and they heard some great singing too.
 
Join us on any of our 3 daily Whale Watch Cruises – Call (808)886-6666 ext. 103 or visit HawaiiOceanSports.com for more information and reservations.
 
Mahalo,
Claire
 
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: A baby whale, called a “calf” looks so small and cute when seen playing with her Mom. But everything is relative…when the calf is born, she can already be 10 to as much as 15 feet long, and she weighs 2000 to 3000 pounds!

Quiet Moms and Babies and Wanna Be Escorts

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Aloha,
We started out our last Friday of Whale Season with, as our on board naturalist Angelica, put it, “a Great Trip”! On the 8:00 Breakfast with the Whales, we saw 4 Humpbacks. The first two were spotted just as we exited the Bay. They looked to be adolescents (in the 30 foot long range), and weren’t doing a whole lot besides surfacing and breathing…and then we saw spouts from Mom and Baby, so we made our way over to them. The Baby was really small…an end of the season calf, and the two of them were on 2 minute breath hold dives. We spent the remainder of our trip with this pod, watching them travel along the coast. As we headed back into the Bay, we had a bonus surprise as we all got to see a Manta Ray “flying” and somersaulting right below the ocean’s surface. On our 10:00 Whale Watch from Kawaihae, we saw 3 Humpbacks. We found a Cow/Calf pod and once in awhile we saw a third whale sort of nearby. We’re pretty sure he was an escort (or trying to be one) but we didn’t see him much so we can’t be sure. We didn’t hear any sounds when we deployed the hydrophone, so not only were there no male singers in our vicinity, but Mom and Baby were being quiet too. Some researchers have observed that females with very small calves often are quiet (not vocalizing much) presumably because they don’t want to attract the attention of those wanna-be escorts.
There’s just one weekend left of our Spectacular 2011/2012 Whale Watch Season. Don’t miss your chance to say “aloha” to our Humpbacks! Call us at 886-6666 ext. 103 or visit www.hawaiioceansports.com to reserve your guaranteed adventure today! And our Guarantees never expire….
Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: In 2004, a company called Whale Power was founded by Dr.Frank Fish, Dr. Phil Watts and Stephen Dewar. The company builds fan blades shaped like a Humpback’s Pectoral Fins with tubercles on the leading edge. The ironically named Dr.Fish was inspired to develop the prototype after looking at a sculpture of a Humpback, and pondering how (or if) the bumps on the front of the whale’s fins would help him move efficiently through the water. He and his partners enlisted the help of the Navy and used their wind tunnel to discover that tubercles break up air (or water flow)…and now with the whale-inspired design, Whale Power’s turbine blades are not only more efficient than smooth blades, but they never stall out violently like smooth blades do, and thus don’t damage the turbine engines. The company’s motto… “A Million Years of Field Tests”.
Mahalo and have a great weekend. I’ll send out the next (and last) whale report on Monday. If you have any other questions about the Humpbacks that you’d like me to answer, please email me over the weekend.
Captain Claire

Humpbacks, Melon Heads, Spinners and Sharks!

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Aloha,

Our weekend of Whale Watching was a lot of fun. On Friday’s 10:00 Whale Watch we saw a pod of 3 whales. Two of them definitely were Mom and Baby, and the third was maybe an escort, but we couldn’t be sure. At one point each of the whales breached, so we saw 3 breaches in total. When we deployed our hydrophone, we were able to pick up one very faint song. We also saw a HUGE pod of spinner dolphins — maybe 200 or 300 of them (it’s hard to count when the pod is so big). On our 10:00 Whale Watch on Saturday we headed North until we encountered a pod of 4 Humpbacks, surrounded by a pod of Melon Head Whales. They, in turn, were accompanied by 3 Pelagic White Tip Sharks. The Humpbacks, Melon Heads and Sharks all hung around us for almost 30 minutes — just about 15 feet away. It was really fun (especially since those deep water sharks didn’t need to be near the surface to breathe…we hardly ever get to see them). And to top it off, we were escorted back to the harbor by a pod of Spinner Dolphins. On our Sunday 8:00 Breakfast with the Whales, we did find a Humpback, but all we saw was a spout and a quick dive, so we called it a “fluke” and invited our guests to come back with us another trip for free. On our 10:00 Whale Watch, we didn’t see any Humpbacks, but we did see that huge pod of Spinner Dolphins again. They put on quite the show for us, leaping, spinning, and bow riding, but since we were out looking for Humpbacks, we called that trip a fluke too, and offered our guests another chance to see the Humpbacks for free.

 

Don’t miss out on the last week of Whale Watching during our 2011/2012 season. Call 886-6666 ext. 103 or visit www.hawaiioceansports.com to reserve your adventure today!

 

Humpback Whale 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.

 

Mahalo,

Captain Claire