Aloha,
We had beautiful conditions for our Tuesday Wake up with the Whales Cruise. Guests on Manu Iwa saw more than 15 different Humpbacks. We saw 6 breaches but none were closer than about 500 yards, and one peduncle throw. We also got to see (and hear) a whale spouting just 100 yards from us. And since the ocean was so calm, we were able to deploy our hydrophone and got to hear some really loud singing.
We started off our 10:00 Cruise from Kawaihae with a pod of extremely active Spinner Dolphins who found us to be a fun object to play around. These little cetaceans came right up to us, and jumped, and spun, and back-flipped, and front-flipped (how do they do that stuff?!). We finally tore ourselves away from them to watch a couple of Humpbacks just sort of spouting and laying around at the surface. We stopped the boat, and these whales kept approaching us…never really doing anything on the surface, but never diving either. When they were just 100 feet from us, while we were all watching, one of them breached. And then he did it again, and again, and again for a total of probably 7 times (each time a little further from us). While all of this was going on, we were keeping our eyes on another pod of whales at our stern — and got to see one of these Humpbacks breach (maybe in response to the first breacher?). Before the weather came in and got windy and sprinkley, we got a chance to deploy our hydrophone, and got to hear some clear singing too.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Before whaling was banned internationally, Humpback whales’ livers were processed for their oil, which contained a lot of vitamin A. A fully grown Humpback has a liver that weighs between 800 and 1400 pounds.