Mahalo to our good friend Carolyn F. for sharing this image of a Humpback calf paying us a visit!
Aloha,
There was lots to look at during Monday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise. As we left the bay, we actually weren’t sure which direction to head because we saw spouts to our north, spouts to our south and even spouts to our west. We eventually chose a direction and got to see lots of dorsal fins and lots of flukes from sounding whales. We discovered that the action wasn’t all going on at the surface because when we deployed the hydrophone we got to listen to multiple whales singing (and some must have been pretty close by). We also got to watch a Humpback breach 9 times (we counted) about a mile away from us.
Our Signature Whale Watch began with a Humpback who breached 7 times just 100 yards off our bow! After that, we cruised around for an hour seeing various spouts here and there, until we found Mom whale and her very young calf. The baby kept trying to approach the boat to investigate, but Mom acted protectively, blocking his approach. Then, the calf breached..then Mom breached…and they kept doing this over and over and over again (not sure if Mom was teaching the baby, or if the little guy was frustrated that he wasn’t allowed to play with us and Mom was asserting her authority). They eventually got within about 50 yards of us (still breaching), and finally Mom allowed the baby to come right down our port side and check out the stern of the boat, so we all got great views of them as they took a close look at us.
On our Whales and Cocktails at Sunset Cruise we also saw lots of spouts. We found a pod of two who appeared to be Mom and a yearling (or maybe just a big whale and a smaller friend), We also saw one breach about 100 yards away from us.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: At birth, a Humpback whale calf weighs between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds which makes us think, “Poor Mom — that’s gotta hurt”!. But the calf actually weighs somewhere between just 3% and 4% of his Mom’s weight. Interestingly, at birth, human babies are proportionally larger, averaging 4%-5% of their Mom’s weight.