It’s Getting Hot In Here

Aloha,

We got to watch all sorts of interesting Humpback behaviors during Tuesday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise. We spent the first half of the trip watching a competitive pod of 3 whales rolling around on the surface. We watched one of them head lunge, heard some trumpeting (whales breathing hard), and actually got to see one whale lay on his back at the surface and clap both his huge pectoral flippers together. Later in the cruise, we were able to deploy our hydrophone and heard some great vocalizations. And then we found a sub-adult just kind of logging on the surface. Every once in awhile, this whale would turn vertical with most of his body underwater and his tail straight up in the air. He wasn’t slapping his tail on the water…so why was he doing this? For our best guess, see today’s “Fact of the Day” below.

On our Signature Whale Watch from Kawaihae, we saw some breachers kind of far away, but were very excited when we watched a pod of two Humpbacks surface very close to a couple of kayakers. We watched the whales watching the kayakers…and then they must have decided that we were worth a look. So they (the whales — not the kayakers) swam over underwater and surfaced right next to our boat — we had they hydrophone in the water during all this, so we got the surreal experience of watching a couple of whales watching us while listening to other whales singing in the background.

Mahalo,

Claire

 

Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Why would a Humpback stick a body part out of the water and up into the breeze? During prolonged movement in warm water, a Humpback’s body will generate heat (the same thing happens to you when you’re exercising, but you’ll start sweating to cool down). Since Humpbacks don’t have sweat glands, but do have some control over their circulatory systems, as they heat up, they can direct blood flow into a network of capillaries near the surface of the their flippers, flukes and dorsal fin: in Latin these capillaries are called “rete mirabilis” which translates to “miracle network”. This in turn allows their excess body heat to be shed to the external environment through evaporation and convection. Many researchers believe that whales who are resting with their flukes exposed vertically in the air, or who are lifting their pectoral flippers for prolonged periods of time in the air, are actually trying to cool off.