Tag Archives: whale pec slap

More Height of the Season Competition

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Aloha,
We began our Monday Whale Watch with “tons of whales in all directions” (that’s according to our marine naturalist Angelica) sighted from the Breakfast with the Whales Cruise. She then gave us a more accurate estimate of a total of 36 whales seen throughout the cruise. We watched a Mom/Baby/Escort pod in about 60 feet of water… until we saw a competitive pod who showed us a few head lunges. We then found a pod of a couple of smaller whales, and watched them battle for awhile, seeing lots of tail lobs and peduncle throws. Just as we were returning to the bay, we saw a huge breach followed by some pec slaps (which looked to us as if the whale was waving “Aloha”). On the Whales and Cocktails Cruise, we saw about 20 different whales and lots of breaching in the distance. We watched a Mom/Baby/Escort pod hanging out on the surface. Mom was just kind of laying on her side, and the escort was swimming along just below her, but so close to the surface that we could see him really well. It was pretty windy out there, but when we were in the right position to deploy the hydrophone, we gave it a try and heard some very loud and clear songs.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: There’s a time when a whale is still in its fetal stage that it’s covered in fur. By the time the calf is born, the fur has disappeared. Many researchers believe that this is another indication that whales have evolved from an animal with a common ancestor to a hippo. The idea that the stages of an animal’s fetal development reflect evolutionary development or “Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny” was first proposed by Ernst Haeckel around 1900.

Cavorting Calves All Weekend Long

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Aloha,
We saw way too much this past weekend to recap all of it…so here’s a few highlights. On Friday’s Breakfast with the Whales, we saw 23 different whales, but really enjoyed watching a pod of 3 who seemed to be rolling around on top of each other. These whales came up vertically out of the water belly-to-belly a couple of times and though we didn’t see their eyes, the posture was very much like a spy hop. They also twisted and turned on the surface, and one of them pec slapped 13 times (we know that because one of our second-grade age guests kept the count for all of us). This whale also did a few complete roll-overs at the surface slapping each of his pec fins as he twisted. On the Alala on Friday, we ran two trips and saw 15 whales the first time, and 20 the second. The highlight of each of those trips was the close encounters with pods of Mom/Baby/Escort who decided to swim under our boat to check us out!
Saturday’s Whale Watches were much the same, with lots of energetic calves playing all around us. One of our favorite moments was watching a calf literally rolling around on top of Mom’s rostrum, slapping his pectoral fins (in delight?). We also loved watching a very young calf (with a completely bent over dorsal fin) attempting a couple of breaches and head lunges. We also had a couple of very close encounters with Mom/Baby/Escort pods. Each time, the baby seemed to lead the way over to us, and each time Mom actually kept herself between the baby and the escort, allowing baby to surface nearer to us. And on the Whales and Cocktails, we saw 25 different whales – no competitive pods, but plenty of Mom/Baby/Escort pods. We saw 20 adult breaches on this trip and 16 calf breaches along with lots of head lunges and tail lobs.
On Sunday’s Breakfast with the Whales, we saw 18 different Humpbacks and had an extremely close encounter with  a curious Humpback who swam around the boat a few times to take a look at us. And we ended the weekend with an adult Humpback breach about 70 yards from the boat. We also got to watch a baby breach over, and over, and over again…and to top it all off…we got mugged by another curious calf and her Mom.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: According to research reported by the Keiki Kohola project, very young calves (identified by the extent to which their fins are still furled from their time in utero) are much more active than older calves, swimming and twirling and kicking. These researchers theorize that all that exercise leads to the production of a necessary oxygen storing protein called “myoglobin”  in the whales’ muscles. One of the reasons adult humpbacks can hold their breath for 45 minutes is that they can store oxygen in their muscles (not just their lungs), and baby is training to be able to do that too.

Humpback Calves Play in the Sun

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Aloha,
Wednesday brought us a perfect day for sailing and whale watching. The only Whale Watch we ran was our Whales and Cocktails Cruise at 3:00 pm from Anaeho’omalu Bay on Seasmoke. We were treated to a whole bunch of really excited calves. We saw 6 different Mom/Baby pods – all within a mile of the bay. 4 of those pods were accompanied by at least one escort. The calves seemed to be enjoying the weather too as we saw one calf breach 14 times! Another calf breached 5 times, and head lunged twice. We also saw multiple tail lobs and pec slaps from an adult whale, and a couple of breaches and peduncle throws from one of the moms who was accompanied by (or more likely, bothered by) an escort. When we dropped the hydrophone in the water, we heard a whale “symphony”. Lots of whales were singing, though none was really very close to us. If you have access to facebook and want to see some photos from last night’s cruise, visit the Hawaii Ocean Sports fan page (type”Hawaii Ocean Sports” into the search box) – Captain Jeff shared some great shots with us.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Whale Fact of the Day: Humpback Whales play host to all kinds of other animals. Besides the barnacles we often see on the Humpbacks’ flukes and other skin surfaces, the whales can also carry tape worms, lung worms, sinus flukes, and whale lice (which are related to skeleton shrimp) among others. Not all of these parasites actually harm the whale (which means that technically, they can’t really all be considered“parasites”). In fact, the barnacles might actually benefit the male Humpbacks who appear to use the sharp edges of the shells (perhaps inadvertently) as weapons during competitive battles.