Aloha

On Thursday’s Breakfast with the Whales, our Captain and Crew reported seeing something very unusual. They said that they were watching 3 whales who were very close to the boat, come to the surface repeatedly with their mouths open. The fish finder on the boat showed that the area was packed with fish…so it’s very possible that guests got to see the whales feeding! This is definitely an unusual behavior for whales in lower latitudes (since generally they fast all winter long here), but it’s not unheard of. Researchers do say that the whales will feed opportunistically wherever they are, but that generally during mating and calving season the opportunity doesn’t come up very often. Besides these close-by whales, we saw lots of other whales spouting, and lots of splashes in the distance. At 10:00, no matter which direction we looked, we saw whales (about 30 over the course of the cruise). We saw pec slaps, head lunges, tail lobs, lots of sounding dives where we could see some great details on their flukes, and had a great close encounter with a whale who decided to swim right under the boat.

Mahalo and have a great weekend. I’ll send the next report out on Monday!

Claire

Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day:   Researchers report that Humpbacks in Alaska can consume a ton of food in a day. Their diet consists mainly of very small fish like herring — based on the calorie count of herring, a Humpback in Alaska is consuming 1,500,000 calories each day!