Aloha,
Guests on Tuesday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise enjoyed a couple of close-up views of adult humpbacks who surfaced and spouted near our boat. We saw more than 10 whales throughout the course of this cruise, and they were all in pods of two…just surfacing, and spouting (sometimes just once) before sounding again.
Guests on our 10:00 Cruise from Kawaihae also saw more than 10 Humpbacks. Highlights included a pair of whales just outside the harbor who surfaced close enough to us to do a little people watching. After all of us got a look at each other, we cruised down the coastline to watch what turned out to be Mom and her baby in shallow water (60 – 100 feet) off of the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel. Baby tried his hardest to come over to us…but Mom kept placing herself between us and her curious calf. Before we left them, baby kind of hopped out of the water a little, and then slapped his little pectoral flipper on the surface. Some of us thought he was waving at us…the rest of us thought he was expressing a bit of frustration at not being allowed to check us out any closer.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: At birth, a Humpback whale calf weighs between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds which makes us think, “Poor Mom — that’s gotta hurt“! But the calf actually weighs somewhere between just 3% to 4% of his Mom’s weight. Interestingly, at birth, human babies are proportionally larger, averaging 4%-5% of their Mom’s weight.