Aloha,

Yet another windy day on the Kohala Coast meant we had to cancel a few trips…but on our Breakfast with the Whales cruise on Seasmoke out of Anaeho’omalu Bay, we did get to see some action. We watched a Mom with her active baby – baby breached 3 times. We also saw some breaches in the distance (though it was too windy to get to those whales). And we had a close encounter with two big adult Humpbacks who decided to surface about 40 feet from us. On the Whales and Cocktails cruise, we saw a couple of whales breaching in the distance just as we left the bay. The wind was still pretty strong, so we decided not to go out to see them, but we did count 10 breaches between the two of them. We headed north towards the Mauna Lani instead, where we found a Mom/Baby/Escort pod. Baby breached 3 times right near the boat, and then we saw a huge tail lob and multiple pec slaps from the adults in the  group. After that, we found a third pod of adults and as the grand finale, one of them breached right next to the boat, giving all of us a great close-up view of the power and size of the whale.

Mahalo,

Claire

Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: A humpback whale’s trachea and esophagus are totally separate tubes (unlike ours which meet up in the back of our mouths). We have an epiglottis which protects our lungs from accidental inspiration of food or liquid – Humpbacks don’t need one…but that also means that a Humpback can only breathe thru her blowholes and not thru her mouth