Aloha,
Monday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise on Seasmoke started out kind of mellow. We weren’t seeing a whole lot, so we stopped the boat and dropped the hydrophone. While we were listening to the whales singing from farther away, a juvenile Humpback popped up really close to us. We watched him till he dove and then started cruising. This little whale came up right next to us several times as we continued down the coastline where we found 5 more Humpbacks sort of scattered about. Two of these whales surfaced about 100 yards from us and we watched as not one, but both of them started breaching and head lunging at each other (it seemed like they didn’t care at all that we were there, totally ignoring us…but we sure enjoyed getting to watch them!).
Guests on Manu Iwa saw 30 different Humpbacks. We couldn’t decide what was more exciting though…watching two Humpbacks charge right at us, trumpeting, and then swimming underneath us, or watching them as they surfaced at the stern and then breached 50 feet behind us, then 100 feet behind us and then finally 150 feet behind us. As Captain Baker put it…”outstanding”!
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Humpback Whales (and, in fact, all Baleen Whales) demonstrate something called “reverse sexual size dimorphism”. This means that an adult female Humpback is larger than an adult male (by about 5%). Though researchers are not sure of the exact reason for the difference in size, they theorize that the increased size allows the female to store more reserves to feed and care for her calf, and also to give birth to a bigger calf who might have a better chance of survival than a smaller one. Average length for a fully grown female Humpback is around 45 feet. At her heaviest, she weighs 35 – 40 tons