Aloha,
One of the questions we get asked most frequently on our Whale Watch Cruises is, “Is there a time of day when the whales are most active”? Our stock answer is, “Yes, but we never know when that will be…as soon as we see a pattern, the whales change it”!
On Monday, we saw a lot of activity during two different cruises. On our 10:00 Cruise from Kawaihae, we saw at least a dozen whales. We were watching a pod of two big adult Humpbacks swimming towards us (of course the boat wasn’t moving) and when they got about 200 feet away, first one breached, and before he even landed, the other breached (if you’re a facebook user click here — one of our guests posted a photo on our facebook page of some of the action). As if that weren’t incredible enough, we also got to see some peduncle throws and some pec slaps from other whales.
On our 10:30-2:00 Snorkel and Whale Watch Cruise, we also got to see some whales close up, but it wasn’t until we were finished with snorkeling and were eating lunch that we got to see some breaching — and it was only about 400 yards from us. So we hauled up the ladder, pulled up the sail, and cruised in that direction. We got to see 4 different pods of two or three whales, including one pod comprised of a fairly large whale, and a sub-adult. The large whale pec slapped and did several peduncle throws (landing on the smaller whale)…and at one point both of them changed direction and decided to come right to us (we were stopped and just watching — the wind had died). The bigger whale continued pec slapping and peduncle throwing on top of the smaller whale as they passed just 40 yards off our port rails!
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day:Being mammals, Humpback Moms feed their calves milk. But Humpback milk isn’t just any old milk — it’s extremely rich with a fat content of approximately 50%! Human milk contains only about 4.5% fat. Supposedly, Humpback milk tastes like “sweetened cod liver oil”…but I don’t know that from experience!