Aloha,
The winds were blowing hard at Anaeho’omalu on Monday, so we had to cancel our cruises from the bay…but luckily there was a lee in Kawaihae and we were able to operate from there.
It seems like lately, every trip we run, we exclaim that the whales we are looking at are “some of the biggest we’ve ever seen”, and today’s trip was no exception. On our 10:00 Signature Whale Watch, we saw 7 different Humpbacks…lots of spouting, and lots of sounding. But two of the “biggest humpbacks we’ve ever seen” decided that we were worth checking out, and approached us pretty closely at the surface several times. I know I’ve said this before, but when you’re close enough to hear the sounds of whales exhaling, it’s such an incredible experience — one I hope you’ll have more than once in your life!
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Humpback Whales (and, in fact, all Baleen Whales) demonstrate something called “reverse sexual size dimorphism”. This means that an adult female Humpback is larger than an adult male (by about 5%). Though researchers are not sure of the exact reason for the difference in size, they theorize that the increased size allows the female to store more reserves to feed and care for her calf, and also to give birth to a bigger calf who might have a better chance of survival than a smaller one. Average length for a fully grown female Humpback is around 50 feet. At her heaviest, she weighs 35 to maybe as much as 45 tons.