Aloha,
The surf was up on Wednesday, and just as on many other high surf days, we needed to travel further out to sea to find Humpbacks — we’re not sure if the Humpbacks feel the underwater surges and move to deeper water on big surf days, or if our observations are just coincidental.
We ran cruises all day, and guests joining us got to see spouts and flukes all day. The Humpbacks we saw were in pods of two (adults of indeterminate gender) or three (mom/baby/escort), and a few were loners (again, of indeterminate gender). We didn’t witness a lot of surface action, but we did see some splashes throughout the day, so we know the whales were communicating with each other regardless of our presence.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Though we’ve mentioned before that only male Humpback Whales “sing”, all Humpbacks make noises and apparently use these sounds to communicate with each other. Researchers have witnessed cooperative feeding behaviors among the Humpbacks apparently “triggered” by sound, and have also witnessed Humpback Cows (moms) apparently ignoring some sounds made by their calves (researchers called these sounds “goo-goo, ga-ga” noises), but responding immediately when the calves made particular squealing noises. So it appears that Mom recognizes her baby’s voice!