Aloha,
We were pleasantly surprised on our Tuesday Wake up with the Whales Cruise. The swell was pretty big, and as I mentioned yesterday, when that happens it’s sometimes more challenging to find the Humpbacks as they seem to be further out to sea. But that wasn’t the case this time as we saw a spout before we got very far from our mooring! At first we thought we’d find a lone whale, but as we approached, we realized it was Mom, with her very young calf. Mom was resting (“logging”) on the surface, and baby was pretty quiet too, but they stayed about 100 yards from us for most of the cruise. We also saw spouts from 6 more Humpbacks in the nearby area.
On the Sail with the Whales Cruise, we saw several spouts — the first whales we encountered were a couple of juveniles who sounded shortly after we got within a couple hundred yards. Later a much older whale surprised us by deciding to swim right down our port side, giving us all a great view. After he left, we saw a couple more spouts off our starboard side, so we waited around to see what would happen. After more than a few minutes of watching nothing, we started up the engines to leave. We were all still looking starboard when both of those whales just erupted from the surface in a full double breach! We also got to see a few pec slaps on the way back to the mooring at the end of the cruise.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Humpback whales can’t cry — they don’t have tear ducts (they don’t need them — their eyes are always bathed in salt water) but they do have glands on their outer corneas which secrete an oily substance that helps to protect their eyes from debris in the ocean.