Counting Barnacles
Aloha,
Tuesday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise began with some breaches far, far away. But throughout the cruise, whales kept surfacing closer and closer to us. By the end of the cruise, we watched a whale pop up right beside us, and then swim right under us (so close to the surface that we could easily see every one of his barnacles)! And as a grand finale, we got to watch multiple breaches just about 50 feet off our bow.
As we left the harbor for our Signature Whale Watch Cruise, we could see two Humpbacks breaching about a mile away. Based on past experience we figured that the activity would end before we got there, but they kept at it during our 10 minutes of travel time, and continued for about 20 minutes after we got to our 100 yard limit. They also did some powerful peduncle throws, tail lobs, and just about everything else you’d want to see! After they finally got tired (or one of them finally conceded), we spent the remainder of our cruise watching surfacing, spouting, and sounding whales — and there were a lot of them all around us.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Most Humpbacks are “right-handed”. Researchers looking at abrasions on Humpbacks’ jaws found more abrasions on the right jaw than on the left, and observed more “flippering” with the right flipper than with the left, suggesting a definite right-side preference among the Humpback population.