Whale milk floating in the water. Click on the photo to read more about Humpback nursing.
Aloha,
We only ran one dedicated Whale Watch Cruise on Thursday, and that was our Wake up with the Whales Cruise. Guests joining us on this cruise got to spend quite a bit of time with our favorite pod of 3 – Mom, her baby, and an escort. We haven’t seen a lot of calves yet this year, and we were kind of wondering if this is the same Mom/baby pod we’ve been spending moments with all week long. Mom, like most moms doesn’t raise her flukes when she dives (most likely because she doesn’t want to leave her calf alone on the surface, so she doesn’t dive deeply), which means the only way we can identify her is by her size, and maybe by her dorsal fin…so we’re not all together certain that we’ve seen her before. Anyway, this pod of 3 was resting in just 52 feet of water in front of Honoko’opae Bay (just north of the Hilton). We also saw several spouts and flukes from other adult Humpbacks cruising around on the surface.
Guests on our private Alala Snorkel Cruise started the trip surrounded by a pod of Spinner Dolphins. Later, before we got to our snorkel site we watched a pod of two Humpbacks surface, spout, and sound very close by. After the snorkeling we saw some tell-tale splashing which turned out to be from a calf attempting to breach. By the time we got to our 100 yard mark, this little guy had stopped breaching, but we got some great views of him, his mom, and an escort on the surface.
Finally, on our Whales & Cocktails at Sunset Cruise, we saw lots of spouts and some splashes a way’s away from us, but were fortunate to spend several surface cycles with a whale that seemed quite interested in us.. The first time we saw him he was about 100 yards away, so we stopped and waited. The next time he surfaced, he was much closer…so we kept waiting. The third time he surfaced, he was just about 25 yards from us. This Humpback had very white pectoral flippers, so when he took the next dive, we could clearly see those beautiful turquoise pec reflections as he cruised past us just below the surface.
Have a great weekend. I’ll send out my next report on Monday.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Being mammals, Humpback Moms feed their calves milk. But Humpback milk isn’t just any old milk — it’s extremely rich, with a fat content of approximately 50%, which means it doesn’t dissipate quickly when it’s in the water (see the photo above)! Human milk contains only about 4.5% fat. Supposedly, Humpback milk tastes like “sweetened cod liver oil” …but I’m going to have to rely on what I read to verify that description