Aloha,
Guests on our 8:00 Wake up with the Whales Cruise on Tuesday saw so much, it’s kind of hard to break it down to just a single paragraph. Before we had even left the bay we could see spouts, and as we headed towards these whales, a pod of Spinner Dolphins came to escort us. Not to be outdone, the Humpbacks we were watching started alternating tail lobbing with peduncle throwing…and then we watched as one whale tail lobbed WHILE the other was peduncle throwing. When that settled down, we went over to watch the spinner dolphins for awhile, and they were doing all sorts of aerial acrobatics…and then we saw a competitive pod of 4 whales charging around on the surface. During one of the few quiet moments in the charter, we decided to deploy our hydrophone to hear if anything was going on underwater and were astounded by the many, loud, distinct voices singing in near proximity to us.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: According to research results released by SPLASH (Structure of Populations, Levels of Abundance and Status of Humpback Whales in the North Pacific – a research project involving more than 400 researchers in 10 countries) there were approximately 18,000 – 20,000 Humpbacks living in the North Pacific in 2008. The the population wintering in Hawaii seeing a 5.5% – 6% annual rate of increase since the early 1990′s.