Happy Valentines Day!
Aloha,
You know how in every job, there’s something that can be completely stressful? Well, for us, it’s not seeing whales until 1/2 way through a cruise, and that’s what happened to us on Tuesday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise. Sure there were blows here and there, but nothing really great…until…we found a competitive pod of two whales. One of them breached 15 times while we watched. Then we saw some incredible pectoral slapping from him…and then…just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, another whale surprised us by spouting at our 4:00 right next to the boat. And this whale decided we were quite interesting — he spent a good 20 minutes swimming around and under us (right under the surface). In the world of whale watching, we call this a “mugging”, and we fell in love with our mugger! Meanwhile, our competitive pod was still competing, breaching and slapping.
After this cruise, we went right back out again with a couple of school groups on an Educational Whale Watch. During the course of this cruise, we saw 10 different Humpbacks, including one who spouted at our 3:00, and then a short while later, at our 9:00 (s/he must have swum under the boat)! Later in the cruise, a whale breached only about 30 yards from our 8:00. Unfortunately, most of us were looking forward and missed it, but we all heard the splash, and we all got to see him spout before he slid under the surface of the ocean.
Guests on our Signature Whale Watch also got some good views of whales a couple different times. One lone humpback spouted at our stern, and then circled us 3 times right next to the boat before sating his curiosity and swimming away. We also got to watch a calf swimming in circles around his resting mom. And just before it was time to go to the dock, we found a competitive pod of 3. These whales also approached us, pec slapping over and over again right beside the boat.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: A Humpback Whale has a big heart. An 80,000 pound whale’s heart averages just over 400 pounds, and according to measurements made by the Nelson Institute of Marine Research, beats an average of somewhere between 10 and 40 times per minute. Happy Valentines Day!!