Aloha,
Hope your weekend was as fun as ours! On Friday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise, we saw 15 different Humpbacks — most in pods of 2. We were able to deploy our hydrophone twice during the cruise and heard from some singers that were fairly far away. The second time we were stopped and listening, a pod of 3 humpbacks surfaced just 150 feet from us, and spent about 5 minutes swimming around on the surface staying just that short distance from us.
The action increased quite a bit for Saturday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise. We saw quite a few breaches, and LOTS of tail lobbing just north of the Bay. We also got the opportunity to watch one Humpback slap his pectoral fin so many times that we all lost count! On our 10:00 Cruise we watched two different competitive pods — one of them was comprised of 4 whales. We saw lots of their flukes as they spent considerable time rolling around each other at the surface. We were all surprised when two whales surfaced just 50 yards off our stern, heading right at us. Of course we stopped the boat, and watched as they dove and swam right under the boat. One of these two was very close to the surface, so we were able to track his progress as he swam by (always exciting)!
Finally, guests on Sunday’s 10:00 Cruise saw a Humpback almost before we got out of the harbor. This whale spouted a couple of times and then sounded, so we moved on. We ended up seeing a pod of 2 Humpbacks about 6 miles north of the harbor, and a couple of breaches on the horizon line before we had to turn around and return to the dock.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Though they look inflexible, a Humpback’s fluke (the wide part of his tail) contains no bones…just cartilage. When the whale is born, the sides of his flukes are curled up so he can slide more easily out of mom’s birth canal.