Aloha,
The southwesterly wind that caused us to cancel much of our day on Sunday switched to strong trade winds on Monday…but we were still able to run a few of our cruises.We took out two boats for our Wake up with the Whales Cruise from Anaeho’omalu Bay. On Manu Iwa, we found a little pocket of calm water and got to see spouts and dorsal fins from about a dozen different whales. Guests on Seasmoke also saw mostly spouts and dorsal fins. We started our cruise surrounded by surfacing whales…there was one at our 9:00, one at our 1:00 and one at our 3:00…and then we saw one behind us too, at our 6:00 who showed us his flukes as he sounded. We did see lots of breaches, but they were way past where we could go in the gusty winds. On our 10:00 Cruise from Kawaihae we also saw lots of spouts and lots of flukes, but again, the whales who did come up to the surface weren’t all that active. Maybe they tired themselves out jumping around in the strong southwesterly winds we experienced all day Sunday!
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: For years, we’ve been telling our guests that researchers estimated a Humpback’s fish consumption during the summer season to be somewhere around 2000 pounds per day. And if you do a quick Google search you’ll find that “fact” cited all over the place. Turns out that this may be just another example of how inaccurate information gets spread. Once a “fact” is listed in a book, it’s picked up on the internet and its spread can be exponential. According to researcher Briana H. Witteveen and her colleagues who conducted a study to determine the effect of Humpback predation on fish abundance near Kodiak Alaska, based on the documented stomach contents of Humpbacks “processed” through whaling stations back in 1937, combined with estimates of actual suitable prey availability, an average size Humpback whale is eating more on the order of 800 pounds (or about 576,000 calories) of food each day.Does that seem like a lot of food to you?