First Competitive Pod, and Bottlenose Dolphins

Aloha,

I have to begin this update with an add-on from Wednesday. We got to witness our first competitive pod of the season during Wednesday night’s Sunset Cruise on Alala from Kawaihae. Throughout the course of the cruise, we saw about a dozen whales, but it was just outside of the harbor where we saw the wildest action. 5 whales were chasing each other, head lunging, charging, and trumpeting. One of them breached not one, not two, but three times just 50 feet from the boat! Un-bee-leiv-able!
We started out our Thursday with our Wake up With the Whales Cruise. Captain Jeff Baker reports an outstanding adventure..with pec slaps, a couple of breaches and even a couple of curious whales who swam right underneath us to take a look at us. On the 10:00 Cruise we got to see a mother and a calf (only the second calf we’ve seen this season). Baby was pretty curious about us, and when we stopped the boat, Mom let him swing by to take a good look at us. And on our Whales and Cocktails Cruise, we spent the 1st hour cruising around, but the second hour made up for it when we found two Humpbacks offshore of the Mauna Lani Resort area. These whales were surrounded by a pod of Bottlenose Dolphins. And the Bottlenose Dolphins were acting like Spinners – jumping, leaping and flipping. The whales didn’t seem nearly as interested or excited by the dolphins as we were.
Mahalo and have a great weekend. I’ll send out the weekend recap on Monday!
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: At birth, a Humpback whale calf weighs between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds which is between 3% and 4% of his Mom’s weight. Interestingly, at birth, human babies are proportionally larger, averaging  4%-5% of their Mom’s weight

Active Adult Humpbacks and a Curious Calf

Aloha,
Based on the Humpback activity these days, you can sure tell it’s February! On Monday’s 10:00 Whale Watch, we had barely left the harbor when we saw 2 full breaches from what turned out to be a Mom/Baby/Escort pod. Unlike our experiences the past few days, it was the adults who were most active, and baby just swam on the surface. After watching this pod for awhile, we headed over to a competitive pod of 5 whales where we heard lots of trumpeting (the sounds whales make when they’re breathing hard) and saw lots of tail lobs. As we headed back to the harbor, we found the same Mom/Baby/Escort pod we had seen in the beginning of the trip. This time, baby decided it was time to check us out, and we watched as he made his approach to the stern of the boat. He couldn’t get too close though before Mom decided to step in and guide this little guy away from us. To top it all off, a big pod (we estimated about 150) of Spinner Dolphins found us and decided our boat was worth playing with – many of them swam right over to ride our bow and stern wakes.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback 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! The calf is about 26 feet long when it’s weaned (at 10-11 months).