Aloha,
Guests joining us on Tuesday’s 10:00 Whale Watch from Kawaihae finally got to see some sunshine…and some whales. Shortly after we left the harbor, we saw a spout to our south, so we cruised down towards Hapuna Beach. We found a solo whale just kind of hanging around in the area. We watched him (her?) through several cycles of surfacing, spouting, and sounding. A couple of times, we got some great views of the underside of his flukes (two big patches of white).
Guests in the stern of the boat got a real surprise when he breached behind us…not just once, but twice (while those of us on the bow of the boat saw the big splash from the first breach, and just a bit of that second breach). He also slapped the surface of the water once with his big pectoral flipper. Oh, and we also saw a few spouts way up north, so we knew there were several Humpbacks cruising through our part of the coastline.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Humpback Whales have the longest Pectoral Flippers (arms) of any of the great whales. They’re so distinctive that the Latin Genus name for the Humpback actually describes those flippers…The Genus and Species names are “Megaptera Novaengliae” meaning “Big-Winged New Englander” (they were named for the Humpbacks living off the east coast of the US).