Mahalo to our good friend Marty Kurpershoek for sharing this image of a Humpback coming up for a breath!
Aloha,
If what we saw on Wednesday’s Signature Whale Watch is any indication, the Kohala Coast is turning into a Humpback nursery! We started our cruise sandwiched between two Mom/Baby pods — one about 100 yards off our bow, and the other about 150 yards off our starboard stern. Both of these pods were just kind of surfacing and breathing before sliding below the surface again…so after watching them for awhile, we headed south to where we saw a couple of big spouts.
These spouts turned out to be from Mom and an Escort…we couldn’t see the little calf till we got much closer. We were a little over 100 yards from Momma and her baby when we were completely surprised by a breach from the escort at our 9:00 just about 25 yards from us. We hung out with this pod of three for awhile, but our attention was drawn to where we had just come from…where we could see a little calf breaching repetitively.
So…we motored back, watching that little guy breaching the whole time. We also got to see him do a couple of peduncle throws (which are cute when a calf does them, but look really aggressive coming from an adult humpback) and a couple of pec slaps. And to top it all off, on the way back to the harbor we saw two more Mom/calf pairs.