Aloha,
Guests on Thursday’s 8:00 Wake up with the Whales Cruise saw 10 -15 different Humpbacks all within about 500 yards of the boat. For the first part of the cruise, they were all just surfacing, spouting and fluke diving, but then towards the end of the cruise we saw a whale about 200 yards away from us breach 5 times. Another close-by whale seemed to answer his breach with 2 of his own breaches…followed by a third whale who surfaced and then started pec slappiing repetitively. We also had a close encounter when two whales surfaced 50 yards behind our idling boat and then swam underneath us.
Guests on the 10:00 Whale Watch from Kawaihae were watching whales almost as soon as we left the harbor. Throughout the course of the cruise, we saw easily a dozen different Humpbacks. They seemed to be enjoying the nice weather as much as we were as they were mostly just surfacing, spouting and diving again. We got a chance to deploy the hydrophone on this cruise, and we heard a LOT of singing going on.
The action continued all day, and on our 3:00 Sail with the Whales Cruise from Anaeho’omalu Bay, we were watching whales before we even left the bay. We saw multiple breaches, and had a very close encounter when two whales popped up right alongside of us (we were very surprised, as we had stopped the boat and were looking at two other whales).
Mahalo and have a wonderful weekend. I’ll send out a recap of our weekend sightings on Monday.
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: When we see a Humpback wave his pectoral fin, it looks really floppy — as if there were no bones inside it at all. But if you were to x-ray that fin, surprisingly, you’d find all the same bones and joints that we have in our arms — all the way down to the smallest digits of our fingers. Though according to researcher Spencer Wilkie Tinker, Humpbacks are missing what would be their third finger on a human.