Tag Archives: whale behavior

Close Encounters, Breaches, and Surface Activity

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Aloha,
Monday’s whale watches can be characterized by one of our favorite behaviors: Close Encounters of the Humpback Kind! On our 10:00 Whale Watch from Kawaihae, guests saw a variety of behaviors from 7 different whales – 5 tail lobs, 2 body lunges, 2 pec slaps and 2 peduncle throws, but for more than 20 minutes, they got to watch a Humpback apparently enamored with one of our dive-site mooring balls. As the boat hovered nearby, the whale swam around and around that mooring ball! At 3:00, our Whales & Cocktails cruise reports seeing somewhere around 20 different whales (sometimes it’s difficult to count) and a couple of pec slaps, but they had a close enounter with 3 whales. Captain Will said they saw the whales in the beginning of the cruise so he shut down the boat engines when he was about 150 yards from the whales, but the whales disappeared. He decided to go look for other whales. After he left, the guests looking behind the boat saw the whales surface again, so Captain Will turned the boat around and motored to 150 yards of them, but this time he left the engines on (in neutral, so the props weren’t turning). Apparently the whales liked the boat noise because they came over to investigate, giving us another close encounter! Oh — and our 8:00 Breakfast with the Whales cruise didn’t have a close encounter, but they did see 13 different whales, with 2 close-by breaches from the same whale! They also saw 3 pec slaps and got in the right place to see some beautiful fluke dives.
Join Ocean Sports and see the Whales. We offer 2 cruises daily just for whale watching, but this time of year, you’ll see whales from our Black Sand Snorkel Sails and our Sunset Sails!  Call 886-6666 ext. 103 or visit www.hawaiioceansports.com to reserve your adventure today.
Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: We know Humpbacks are big animals, but it’s not until we have a CLOSE ENCOUNTER that we really appreciate how big they are. But Humpbacks are only the 5th largest of the great whales — Blue whales, Finbacks, Grays, and Right Whales (including Bowheads) are all longer (on average)– and if you want to count the toothed whales in the list, Sperm Whales are longer too.
Mahalo,
Captain Claire

Humpback Chatter

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Aloha,
Guests aboard all our Whale Watch Cruises reported lots of whale activity all day on Wednesday. Because we operated a special schedule yesterday, I don’t have my regular trip report, but suffice it to say, from sunrise (well, actually from 8:00 am — we didn’t start that early) till sunset, we were privileged to share the ocean with the Humpbacks. Throughout the day, guests saw dozens of  Humpbacks multiple times. We witnessed the whole retinue of Humpback surface activity, including breaches, head lunges, peduncle throws, and tail lobs. When hydrophones were deployed on all boats, we could hear lots of singing and lots of “chatter”. Of course we also saw lots of those beautiful V-shaped Humpback spouts up and down the coast.
Join Ocean Sports on any of our daily Whale Watch Cruises, Snorkel Sails or Sunset Sails and see the action for yourself! Call us at 886-6666 ext. 103 or visit www.hawaiioceansports.com for details and reservations.
Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: Though we’ve mentioned before that only male Humpback Whales “sing”, all Humpbacks make noises and apparently use these sounds to communicate with each other. Researchers have witnessed cooperative feeding behaviors among the Humpbacks apparently “triggered” by sound, and have also witnessed Humpback Cows (moms) apparently ignoring some sounds made by their calves (researchers called these sounds “goo-goo, ga-ga” noises), but responding immediately when the calves made particular squealing noises. So it appears that Mom recognizes her baby’s voice!
Mahalo,
Captain Claire