Aloha,
I can hardly believe the Whale Season has begun already. Where has the year gone???
Though our season has started off kind of slow with just sporadic sightings, we have seen Humpbacks the last couple of days on our Whale Watch Cruises. On Monday’s 10:00 Cruise from Kawaihae, we found a pod of two Humpbacks about a mile from the harbor. One of these whales was considerably larger than the other leading us to believe we were watching a mom and her yearling. The bigger whale breached not once, but TWICE just about 200 yards from the boat!
And we spent most of our Tuesday Wake up with the Whales Cruise paralleling a lone humpback just about a 1/2 mile off shore of Anaeho’omalu. This relatively small whale was surfacing and diving, giving us all some good views of the underside of his flukes. Just as Captain Mike decided it was time to turn the boat back to the bay, we saw FIVE complete breaches from 3 different whales we hadn’t seen before just about 500 yards away from us, followed by some pectoral fin slaps by one of the breachers. Incredible!
Just like the past two years, I’ll be sending these updates to you on weekdays. I’ll also be posting them here on our blog (along with photos when I get them). If you know of anyone who would like to be added to the list, please feel free to pass along the link or my email address!
Looking forward to another great whale season,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: According to observations made by Humpback researchers in Hawaii, the first whales to arrive in Hawaii each year from Alaska are females with a yearling, followed by sub-adults (usually males) — the teenagers of the whale world. The next arrivals are adults who are looking for mates, and the last to arrive are pregnant females. It may just be a coincidence, but our first sightings have followed this trend.