Aloha,
Tag Archives: Mom/Baby/Escort
Spinners Join the Fun
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In the Humpback World, Who Chooses Who?
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Mottled Whale
Aloha,
We also saw a lot of other spouts and tails from cruising adult Humpbacks. And we weren’t even out of the harbor on our 10:00 Signature Whale Watch when a guest yelled “Dolphins! Twelve o’Clock!” We soon found ourselves surrounded by a pod of 100+ very active Spinner Dolphins. We saw lots of babies jumping and spinning along with the adults, and as usual with a pod of Spinners, a bunch of them took turns playing in our bow wake. After watching them for awhile, we turned south towards a couple of Humpback spouts, but before we could go even 200 yards, a sub-adult Humpback surfaced right next to us. This guy was only about 25 feet long and had mottled skin (covered in white spots). We thought we saw the last of him when he took a dive…but he decided to stay with us, paralleling us for more than 40 minutes — always surfacing on our port side, taking 3 breaths and diving again. After watching him for awhile (and trying to determine why his skin was spotted), we stopped to deploy our hydrophone and got to listen to some very clear songs. Finally, on our way in again, we saw spouts and dives from 4 more pods of adult Humpbacks — two pods of two and two pods of 4. And on the Whales and Cocktails Cruise, we spent the first 45 minutes or so with a competitive pod of 5 whales that were heading north. We saw lots of lunging and heard lots of trumpeting from them. Then, we turned back and spent the rest of the time bouncing between different Mom/baby/escort pods. There sure are a lot of humpbacks around this season!
Bigger Equals Tougher
Aloha,
Hear What We Heard – Humpbacks Sing
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Mugged and Loving It!
Aloha,
We had an outstanding time on our Wake Up with the Whales Cruise on Thursday. We were barely outside of the bay when we found a very active competitive pod of 5 whales. These humpbacks stayed with us for over an hour, pec slapping, head lunging and peduncle throwing all around us. That was really fun to watch, but then the pod decided to dive underneath us. We couldn’t believe our luck when we got our first glimpse of them below the boat…but it got better. These whales must have found us a good diversion (or maybe they were using us in ways we don’t quite understand) because they mugged us for more than 20 minutes. Eventually they surfaced far enough away that we could maneuver away and head back to the bay. On the way back, a Mom/Baby pod surfaced just over 100 yards from us. Classic.By the afternoon, the action had calmed down quite a bit but we saw more than 20 humpbacks on our Whales and Cocktails Cruise including 3 Mom/Baby/Escort pods. We got some good fluke sightings too.
Mahalo and have a great weekend. I’ll send a recap of the weekend’s events on Monday.
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day…just in time for Valentine’s Day! A Humpback Whale has a big heart. An 80,000 pound whale’s heart averages just over 400 pounds, and according to measurements made by the Nelson Institute of Marine Research, beats an average of somewhere between 10 and 30 times per minute.
Babies find us Interesting
Aloha,
Peduncles Perplex
Aloha,
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: I was at the airport Thursday afternoon, when a guest from one of last week’s Whale Watch cruises who apparently recognized me even though I wasn’t dressed in my Ocean Sports uniform walked over and said, “I just can’t remember…what was that word you used to describe the back of the whale”? I answered that we call the region between the whales’ flukes and his main body, a “peduncle”…but why? So I looked it up. The word “peduncle” comes from the Latin word “ped” which means foot. It was first used to describe the stalk of a flower, fruit, or tumor. I guess that makes sense…the back part of the whale does sort of look like a stalk, bearing the whale’s wide flukes.
Magical Cruise with Dolphins and Humpbacks
Aloha,