Aloha,
The wind was still blowing on Tuesday, but the whales were definitely awake for our Wake up with the Whales Cruise. We had hardly left the bay when we saw a full breach about 400 yards in front of us. We also got to see a pec slapper and a couple of tail lobs. We got a chance to deploy the hydrophone and heard some singing, but it was pretty faint…the singers were a long way from us. Oh, and we also were accompanied by a super pod of Spinner Dolphins for just over 15 minutes.
Guests on our 10:00 Cruise got to see 5 different solo Humpbacks just outside of the harbor. Each of them was on a long breath hold cycle, so after watching them all sound, we headed further south (accompanied by some Spinner Dolphins). Just off shore of Spencer Beach Park, we encountered Mom, Baby and an Escort. The baby was fairly curious about us, attempting to swim our way multiple times, but Mom wasn’t having any of it as she positioned herself between us and the baby over and over again. We also got to see the escort’s flukes as he did some deep diving near us. When we deployed our hydrophone, the songs were LOUD, leading us to ponder whether we were listening to some of those first whales we encountered as we left the harbor.
Our last cruise of the day was the Sail with the Whales. This trip started out a bit slow as we searched for blows. But it ended with a bang (or, to be more accurate, a bang times 15) as we got to watch a mature humpback breach 15 times in front of us!
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: We don’t always need to deploy our hydrophone to hear the whales singing. When singing whales are very close to the boat, their songs reverberate through the hulls. Is this experience responsible for the origin of the Greek myth of the sirens? In Greek mythology, sirens were the beautiful creatures who lured sailors with their enchanting music to crash on their islands. Now imagine you were a sailor in, say 1576 BC, listening to these haunting sounds in the hold of your ship…who (or what) would you think was responsible for their creation?