Aloha,
Thursday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise started with a bang. We had barely left the bay when we came across a competitive pod of 3 whales. They were kind of hard to keep up with as they seemed to be doing most of their competing under water, and then popping up all around us so we never knew where to look. At one point though, they surfaced at our 9:00 just over 100 yards from us. so almost everyone was looking that direction when one of those whales decided to breach. A bit later in the cruise, we came across Momma whale and her calf. They stayed with us for quite awhile. Of course baby was surfacing much more frequently than Mom…and though we never saw an escort with them it’s possible he was there. When we deployed the hydrophone, we heard some great loud and clear songs and sounds from multiple whales.
Mahalo and have a great weekend. I’ll send out a recap of our sightings on Monday.
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Though we’ve mentioned before that only male Humpback Whales “sing”, all Humpbacks make noises and apparently use these sounds to communicate with each other. Researchers have witnessed cooperative feeding behaviors among the Humpbacks apparently “triggered” by sound, and have also witnessed Humpback Cows (moms) apparently ignoring some sounds made by their calves (researchers called these sounds “goo-goo, ga-ga” noises), but responding immediately when the calves made particular squealing noises. So it appears that Mom recognizes her baby’s voice!