Tag Archives: whale migration

More Competition

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Aloha,
On Thursday’s Breakfast with the Whales Cruise, we had to work a bit to find the whales, but when we did…what a show! We started the cruise with sightings of two adult Humpbacks. We saw them spout a few times, and then saw their flukes as they began longer deeper dives…so we decided to move on. We motored around some more until we saw some splashes so we went to investigate. The splashes turned out to be from a pod of two competing whales. One was obviously chasing the other around, and the whale that was being chased appeared to be pretty irritated (or excited) because we got to see this whale breach SEVEN times about 100 yards from the boat!
Mahalo and have a wonderful weekend. I’ll send out the weekend recap on Monday. It’s hard to believe there are only 4 days of this fantastic 2012/2013 Humpback Whale Season left for us. Luckily for all us whale watchers, a lot of these whales don’t seem to know the season ends on Monday and seem to be sticking around!
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: As we bid “aloha” to the Humpbacks this season and eagerly await their return, we now know that not every Humpback who survives the summer season in Alaska will choose to migrate back next winter. Based on information compiled by our favorite researcher Chris Gabriele and her cohorts for the National Park Service in Glacier Bay and Icy Strait, at least 10 Humpbacks have been documented spending one winter off the coast of Sitka, and at least one off the coast of Juneau. We really don’t know how common this behavior is because almost no photographic identification research takes place in SE Alaska over the winter months (and who can blame the researchers when there are such great opportunities to conduct their studies in sunny Hawaii instead??!!).

Baby Rides Along

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Aloha,
The whale action is still going strong! On our 10:00 Whale Watch we saw more than a dozen whales. We had a few close encounters with different Mom/Calf/Escort pods, and saw some breaches a little ways from the boat. Of course our favorite sight is watching a calf watch us, and we did get to see that during the trip. On our Whales and Cocktails Cruise, we saw a Mom and her Calf just as we left the bay. Mom was being chased by an escort, and she put her baby out in front (so baby could “ride along” on the pressure wave she created as she swam away from the escort). After that, we found another Mom/Calf pod…and this time, we got to see the baby breach. We also saw a few peduncle throws and some tail lobs from various other adult Humpbacks throughout the trip.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: The Humpbacks we see off Hawaii’s coastlines travel quite a bit between the islands, but researchers have yet to observe a directional trend. In other words, some whales travel North to South, some South to North, and some travel back and forth…a lot like our human visitors. 

Windy Weekend Brings Plenty of Action

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Aloha,
The winds were up certainly strong past weekend, so we ended up having to cancel a few charters…but we were able to operate out of Anaeho’omalu  and here are some highlights from the past few days…On Friday’s Breakfast with the Whales, we saw multiple competitive pods with lots of action consisting of many males swimming fast and banging into each other. On Friday’s Whales and Cocktails, we enjoyed two very close encounters with two different Mom/Calf pods. We found the first pod just outside of the Bay. Baby breached 5 times before balancing precariously on Mom’s rostrum. Mom brought him right over to the boat and we all got a good look at each other! We found the second pod a little further south. This baby breached 3 times and head lunged twice before swimming our way. Again, Mom let him come right over to the boat and swim alongside before they both took off. On Sunday’s Breakfast with the Whales, we saw 3 different Mom/Baby pods, and enjoyed watching yet another excited calf breach a few times. We also saw a couple of adult breaches (one fairly close by) and a couple of small competitive pods composed of smaller whales.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: Though Humpback whales in different hemispheres migrate on opposite schedules (when it’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s winter in the Southern Hemisphere) and therefore are very unlikely to meet, no subspecies of Humpbacks are recognized genetically. In fact there has been some research done on maternal lineages that demonstrates relationships which exist in the present across hemispheric boundaries. This suggests that at one point (perhaps in the very distant past) there was some level of inter-hemispheric gene flow.