Flukes Up!
Aloha,
Well, the wind conditions on Thursday were opposite of what we experienced on Wednesday, so we had to cancel our Kawaihae Cruises, but we were able to operate our Anaeho’omalu Bay Cruises.
We ran 3 different cruises: our Wake-up with the Whales Cruise, an Educational Whale Watch for the keiki from Laupahoehoe School, and a Sail with the Whales Cruise.
All day long we saw lots and lots of spouts and flukes. We also got to watch several non-sounding dives. We saw some splashes in the distance here and there from whales communicating on the surface, but shortly after leaving the bay for our Sail with the Whales Cruise, we were surprised by a breaching whale close by. After that single breach, he spouted a couple of times and sounded. All day long we saw a lot of different pods of two mature whales, and several solo whales. Though it’s really difficult to keep count when there are so many whales around, we think on each cruise we saw at least 15 different Humpbacks (maybe more).
Have a wonderful weekend. I’ll send out my next report on Monday.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: On Tuesday, we discussed the theory that Humpbacks lift their flukes into the air to help regulate their body temperatures thru evaporation. Our naturalist Greg has been doing some additional reading and found another interesting observation. Folks from the Pacific Whale Foundation have suggested that the whales with the head down/fluke up posture have simply fallen asleep, and they’re in such a deep slumber that their heads sink and their tails just naturally pop up like a cork! They also say they’ve spent considerable time next to these head down/flukes up whales, and the whales never reacted to the presence of the boats (presumably because they were in such a deep sleep state). Based on other research we’re read on the sleep patterns of marine mammals, we’re a bit skeptical of this theory..there’s so much we don’t know about Humpbacks, but it’s the process of learning that makes all of this so fun!