Aloha,
Guests joining us on Thursday’s Whale Watch Cruises were treated to pretty much every surface activity you can think of. On Manu Iwa’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise, we found a mom and her calf just outside of the Bay and watched the two of them each breach about a dozen times They stayed with us for the entire cruise, and besides watching them, we also got to see pec slaps, tail lobs, and more breaching from other close-by whales. We also got to hear quite a bit when we dropped our hydrophone. We recorded about a minute of the song — it was incredibly loud — if you have access to speakers, you can hear what we heard by clicking here.
The whales were active all day, and on our Sail With the Whales Cruise we also saw and heard a lot. Though Mom and her calf were nowhere to be found, we got to see lots of big adult Humpbacks breaching fairly close to us throughout our cruise. We also saw pec slaps and tail lobs, and even a few peduncle throws.
Mahalo and have a great weekend. I’ll send out a recap of the weekend sightings on Monday!
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day:Dr. Alison Craig and her associates observed that female Humpbacks in Hawaii with calves in tow swim 75% faster when they’re being chased by males in deep water than when they’re being chased in shallow water. As water depth decreased so did the number of males following the mother, making females most likely to be found alone with their calves in the shallows. So why is this observation important? Dr. Craig suggests that it is unwanted male attention which causes the females and calves to increase their swimming speed, in turn requiring the mothers to supply their calves with more milk to compensate for the extra energy they’ve used. Since the adult females aren’t feeding in Hawaii, the researchers theorize that these female Humpbacks are actually seeking shallow water not to avoid predators…but to avoid sexual harassment from male Humpbacks!