Sounding – Image courtesy of Stephanie Collier
Aloha,
Guests on Wednesday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise saw a lot of spouting, and a lot of dorsal fins, and a few flukes from various Humpbacks in the area. Twice we were surprised when whales surfaced within 100 yards of us, and each time, these whales took a couple of breaths and headed back underwater. At one point in the cruise, when we were about a mile and a half outside of the bay, one of our guests pointed out what she thought was a dolphin trailing a kayaker. As we watched, this animal circled the kayaker and then put his “nose” up on to the bow of that little boat. It wasn’t a dolphin…it was an 8 – 10 foot long tiger shark. After the shark saw what he wanted to see, he slipped back underwater and disappeared from view. Of course we drove over to the kayaker to make sure he was ok…but he assured us he was, and didn’t need any help. Just goes to show that even the most “aggressive” of sharks, aren’t necessarily a threat to us (or the other creatures sharing their ocean).
Guests on our Mid-Morning Cruise got to know a Mom/Calf/Escort pod pretty well. Though we saw spouts from other whales here and there, our three-some was pretty consistently on the surface, so we watched them for most of the cruise. We always enjoy watching the way Mom positions herself between the Escort and her Baby when they’re all on the surface, and we always enjoy watching Baby dive down to his waiting Mom (it sometimes looks like such a struggle for him to actually make those dives).
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 (which means our livers are in the same proportion to our bodies as theirs are to their bodies).