Aloha,
We had lots of Humpback sightings on Thursday’s 10:00 Cruise from Kawaihae. As we exited the harbor, we saw a spout straight out to sea, and we intended to go check that whale out. But then we encountered our favorite dilemma when we saw another spout a bit closer to our south — with whales in both directions, which way do we go??!! We decided to try our luck with the closer spouts, and were actually rewarded by sightings of two different humpbacks at the same time — one was at our 11:00 and the other at our 1:00. We kept our heads on a swivel so we could watch both of these whales until they sounded. Then, we found a pod of playful spinner dolphins who hung out with us for awhile. We watched them until we saw more Humpback spouts in the other direction, so we headed over to see these whales. We got to see their dorsal fins and several spouts until these whales sounded. If that weren’t enough, on our way back to the harbor, the dolphins found us and played with us again!
On our 3:00 Sail with the Whales Cruise from Anaeho’omalu Bay we saw spouts from more than 10 different Humpbacks. We couldn’t believe our eyes (or our luck) when 2 of them decided to approach us about 100 yards off our bow and then start breaching. We saw at least 8 full breaches from these whales (and remember…they were RIGHT in front of us!), including one double breach. We also saw some pec slapping, head lunges and a few tail lobs before we raised the sails and enjoyed some coastal sailing on our way back to the bay.
Mahalo, and have a great weekend. I’ll send out a recap of our sightings on Monday.
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Biopsy samples taken from South Pacific Humpbacks show a ratio of 2.4 males for every female on the breeding grounds. A similar ratio has been observed in Hawaii. This suggests either: 1). female Humpbacks can afford to be choosy with their mating partner; or; 2). female Humpbacks are overwhelmed by aggressive males and bullied into mating.