Aloha,
As we near the end of our Whale Watch Season, we’re noticing a marked decline in the number of Humpbacks around our area, but we’re still having a lot of fun on our cruises!
- On Friday’s Whale Watch Cruise, we didn’t see any Humpbacks at all! We did get to hear them singing when we deployed our hydrophone, though it was pretty faint. We were also overcome by a huge pod of Spinner Dolphins who spent considerable time playing around the boat. We saw lots and lots of spinning, leaping and bow wake riding. But, even though dolphins are cetaceans, we didn’t count the sightings as “Whales” and offered all our guests another Whale Watch Cruise with us for FREE.
- Saturday, we operated 3 cruises from Anaeho’omalu Bay on Seasmoke. On each of them we saw the same Mother and Calf. Most of the time they were just on the surface spouting and resting, but early in the day, we saw Mom do a head lunge, and they both swam up to the boat for a quick look at us. Later in the day, the baby was restless, twisting and turning at the surface. We also got to see a full breach from Mom. On Saturday’s Whales and Cocktails at Sunset Cruise, we saw a full breach on the horizon, but though we headed out to the area, we never saw the whale again.
- Sunday’s Whale Watch Cruise was a repeat of Friday’s…no whale sightings, so we invited everyone on board to join us again on another Whale Watch Cruise for FREE!
Mahalo,
Claire
Captain Claire’s Humpback Fact of the Day: In 2004, a company called Whale Power was founded by Dr. Frank Fish, Dr. Phil Watts and Stephen Dewar. The company builds windmill blades shaped like a Humpback’s pectoral flippers with tubercles on the leading edge. The ironically named Dr.Fish was inspired to develop the prototype after looking at a sculpture of a Humpback, and pondering how (or if) the bumps on the front of the whale’s flippers would help him move efficiently through the water. He and his partners enlisted the help of the Navy and used their wind tunnel to discover that tubercles break up air (or water flow)…and now with the whale-inspired design, Whale Power’s turbine blades are not only more efficient than smooth blades, but they never stall out violently like smooth blades do, and thus don’t damage the turbine engines. The company’s motto… “A Million Years of Field Tests”.