Tag Archives: pec slaps

Muggings and More

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Aloha,
Friday brought us some heavy winds so we only ran a couple of Whale Watch Charters. On the Breakfast with the Whales, we saw lots of surface activities, but the highlight of the trip was our close encounter with a Mom and her Baby who were curious enough to swim by and check us out. On the 10:00 Whale Watch, we saw 15 different Humpbacks including 4 Mom/Baby pods, three of whom were accompanied by an escort. We also saw 3 different species of dolphins – Spinners, Bottlenose, and Spotted.
The winds calmed a bit on Saturday and we had some great sightings. On the 10:00 Whale Watch, we stopped counting at 23 whales. The highlight of the trip was watching a competitive pod of 5 whales really charging each other. At one point we all watched as one of the males literally swam right over another male on the surface. We saw peduncle throws, tail lobs, and head lunges from this group too. On the Whales & Cocktails Cruise, both Seasmoke and Manu Iwa were mugged by a very curious whale. First, the whale spent 35 minutes right next to Seasmoke, and then he swam over to Manu Iwa and stayed for another 25 minutes. It was unreal! We also saw head lunges, breaches, tail lobs, and pec slaps but our memories of exactly how many of each of those activities we saw were erased after the muggings! If you’d like to see photos from this incredible cruise, go to the Hawaii Ocean Sports Fan Page on Facebook.
On Sunday’s 10:00 Whale Watch, guests saw 20 whales including 5 Cow/Calf/Escort pods. We saw lots of surface activity too, including 5 breaches, 10 tail lobs, a couple of peduncle throws and lots of pec slaps. At one point we found ourselves surrounded by 4 different Mom/Baby pods..one on each side of the boat, one at the bow, and one at the stern. And on the Whales & Cocktails Cruise, we saw 35 different whales…there was so much surface activity that we couldn’t keep accurate counts! We loved watching a very active baby whale breaching, tail lobbing, and pec slapping right along side his mom who was doing the same activities! We also loved watching a different calf ride along on top of her Mom’s rostrum…and another highlight was watching yet another calf lying on his back, double pec slapping. This was another one of those whale watches that had action every where you looked and every time you looked. I hate to keep using exclamation marks but I can’t figure out a better way to describe what we were seeing this weekend than by doing this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Most Humpbacks are “right-handed”. Researchers looking at abrasions on Humpbacks’jaws found more abrasions on the right jaw than on the left, and observed more“flippering” with the right flipper than with the left, suggesting a definite right-side preference among the Humpback population.

Whale Calves Playing and Barnacles Travelling

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Aloha,
Monday’s whale watches were a mixed bag. On our 8:00 Breakfast with the Whales trip out of Anaeho’omalu, we travelled up and down the coast looking for Humpbacks but we didn’t see any. Since we guarantee our morning Whale Watches, our guests were invited to return on another Whale Watch for free! I guess the Humpbacks had all decided that the Northern part of the sanctuary waters was the place to be, because on our 10:00 Whale Watch out of Kawaihae, we saw 6 Humpbacks. We saw 3 lone whales and one pod of Cow/Calf/Escort. We saw a breach on the horizon, 3 pec slaps and 2 double pec slaps (those were from the calf who seemed to be enjoying his time on the surface). We deployed the hydrophone twice on this trip. The first time, the sounds we heard were really faint, and the second time, they were a little better, but we could tell the singers weren’t in our direct vicinity.
The Humpback Whale Watching Season ends April 15th — don’t miss out! Call 886-6666 ext. 103 or visit www.hawaiioceansports.com to reserve your Guaranteed adventure today.
Humpback Whale Fact of the Day:  The barnacles called “Coronula diadema” live only on Humpback Whales, and they seem to prefer to live on areas of the whale where the water flow is consistent (chin and fins).  Though researchers aren’t sure how the barnacle can even find a whale to live on, there is some speculation that because the barnacles are spawning during the winter in Hawaii, the whales here are swimming in “barnacle larvae soup”. When a whale swims by, those “baby” barnacles chemically sense it, and hop on where ever they can. They use their antennae as “feet’ and walk around the whale till they find a suitable spot (which can take quite awhile…if the barnacle were the size of a person, the whale would be 20 miles long). Once they find a spot they like, they flip over and produce tube-shaped cavities in their shells that actually draw in prongs of growing whale skin, holding their position on the whale for life.
Mahalo,
Captain Claire

Singing and Dancing

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Aloha,
We’ve always kind of assumed that Humpbacks don’t mind the rain — after all, they do live in a wet world… and our Tuesday Whale Watches confirmed that. We began the day with a 10:00 Whale Watch from Anaeho’omalu. Guests saw 7 Humpbacks, including 2 pods of Cow/Calf/Escort. One of the escorts breached really close to the boat. We also saw quite a bit of tail lobbing and heard some great singing when we deployed the hydrophone. On our 3:00 Whales and Cocktails cruise, our guests who braved the on-again, off-again drizzly conditions saw 11 different whales. We weren’t sure if the highlight of the trip was watching a whale breach 100 feet from the boat…TWICE, the 25 minutes we were mugged by a sub-adult male, the pectoral slaps we saw, the loud singing we heard from our hydrophone, or the weirdly beautiful vertical twisting diving “dance” our mugging-whale performed three times as he passed by the boat and decided to return to us. If the whales’ interest in our boats today was at all caused by the weather, we say “Bring on the rain”!
Join Ocean Sports for an exciting Whale Watch Adventure. Call us at 886-6666 ext. 103 or vist www.hawaiioceansports.com for reservations today.
Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: At birth, a Humpback Whale Calf weighs betweeen 3% and 4% of his Mom’s weight. Interestingly, at birth, human babies average 4%-5% of their Mom’s weight.
Mahalo,
Captain Claire