Humpback Whale Sightings and Statistics

Windy Whale Watching

Humpback Whale Sightings and Statistics|

Aloha,

The weather on our parts of the island on Wednesday was pretty windy. So windy, in fact, that our Wake up with the Whales Cruise was only out 10 minutes before Captain Shane realized that the conditions off of Anaeho’omalu Bay wouldn’t allow for a quality cruise. He turned the boat back around and encouraged all our guests to reschedule for a calmer day. On our 10:00 Whale Watch from Kawaihae, Captain Will found some wind too…but the Kohala Mountains provided enough of a lee that he could take our guests out on a safe and fun adventure. On this cruise, we got to see two different Humpbacks fairly close to the boat. Each of them surfaced and was on the surface for about a minute, and we got to see each of them spout 3 times before sounding. Apparently, UNDER water was the place to be on Wednesday!

Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: In Sept. 2013, Dianne Nyad completed a record breaking 110 mile swim from Cuba to Florida – but in the Humpback world, that’s nothing. Migration between Alaska and Hawaii is around 3500 miles. But Humpbacks can swim even further than that. In 2001, a Norwegian tourist snapped a photo of a female Humpback in breeding grounds off the coast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. When he found the photo again in 2010 and posted it, researchers were able to match the flukes to a photo they had taken of the SAME whale in breeding grounds off the coast of Brazil — which means she had swum more than 6000 miles! Researchers aren’t sure what motivated the whale to swim across the Atlantic– until this whale was identified in both places; it was assumed that Humpbacks only travelled across latitudes, not longitudes. Which just goes to show you…we still have a LOT to learn.