Aloha,
The Humpbacks were on crazy long dive times during Wednesday’s Wake up With the Whales Cruise. We had to travel around a lot just to find any of them, and once we did, they’d spout and sound. We saw 4 different Humpbacks during the trip but the sightings weren’t good enough to satisfy Captain Jeff. He called the trip a “Fluke” and invited our guests to return on another Whale Watch Cruise for FREE.
We also had a couple of Humpback sightings during our Snorkel and Whale Watch Adventure Cruise, including one whale who did a single peduncle throw for some reason. We were about 500 yards away from him, and we didn’t see any other whales close by, so it left us wondering what all that was about.
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: Recently, researchers studying singing male Humpbacks were able to determine that immature males (they based maturity level on length and testes weights) join mature Humpbacks in singing. Since we know that the female Humpbacks don’t respond to an individual male’s song – it’s not like a songbird’s song, designed to attract a female and repel other males – the researchers theorize that the Humpbacks’ songs are meant to attract females to the “arena” where the males are congregating. Though the immature males won’t mate successfully with the arriving females, spending their time singing probably provides some benefits to them too. Not only are they learning the local version of the song, but they may also be learning the social rules of mating.