Whale Anatomy
Image courtesy of thinglink.com
Aloha,
The ocean was very calm during Friday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise, and so were the whales. We saw 10 different humpbacks — all of them were by themselves, and all of them were just surfacing, spouting and sounding. And when we deployed the hydrophone, we could tell the singers were all pretty far away from us. On our Snorkel and Whale Watch Adventure Cruise we found a Mom/Baby pod both before and after snorkeling. The first pod was accompanied by an escort, and the second pod was not (though we’re not entirely sure it wasn’t the same Mom and calf both times). Anyway, the calf we saw after snorkeling was burning some energy — we saw breaches, lunges, mini-peduncle throws, and even some tail lobs from this little guy before he finally calmed down.
The surf was up on Saturday, but we were able to run our Wake up with the Whales Cruise, and it turned out to be a cruise full of surprises. Right off the bat, we saw three whales surface and then sound fairly close-by (huge fluke dives). Then we headed out to where we saw some breaching going on. By the time we got there, the whales had stopped breaching, but they were pec slapping repetitively. They started to swim away from us, but then one of them apparently changed his mind and made a turn towards the boat. He swam just under the surface down our port side, and finally came up and spouted just about 20 yards off our bow. After that, a different whale breached right behind us, and then we saw our pec slappers again at the surface in front of us. It just was one of those days we had to keep our heads on a swivel! On our Whales and Cocktails at Sunset Cruise we saw spouts here and there, but the highlight was watching a pod of 3 big Humpbacks lift their flukes and sound. And then… all three of them came out of the water with full breaches, followed by head lunging, pec slapping, and tail lobbing…and all of it was on top of each other. What a fight!
On Sunday’s Signature Whale Watch, we had lots of close encounters with different Humpback pods, but our favorite was with a Mom/Baby/Escort pod who swam right to us. Baby even breached just about 15 yards off our stern. We also got to listen to some very clear and loud Humpback songs when we deployed our hydrophone.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Before whaling was banned internationally, Humpback whales’ livers were processed for their oil, which contained a lot of vitamin A. A fully grown Humpback has a liver that weighs between 800 and 1400 pounds. An adult human’s liver averages between 3.2 and 3.7 lbs.