Flukes – Image courtesy of Joanne Lyons
Aloha,
The seas were calm, the winds were calm, and the whales were calm for our Monday Wake up with the Whales Cruise. Guests joining us on Seasmoke saw a lot of different Humpbacks in our near vicinity — at least 7 different pods of 2 or 3 — just spouting and sounding. We spent most of our time watching Mom, her baby, and an escort whale. We think that the baby really wanted to check us out, and we got to watch Mom let him surface just about 50 yards from us before she decided he was close enough, and corralled him with her body to push him away. When we deployed the hydrophone we realized there was quite a bit going on underwater too — lots of loud and clear voices for us to listen to.
It was a whole different world up in Kawaihae on our Mid-Morning Cruise. Guests on this trip saw too many breaches to keep count. And the activity wasn’t just from one whale either — we saw multiple breaches from 3 different adult Humpbacks, as well as pec slaps from two whales, and a peduncle throw from another. What a ruckus!
It was a whole different world up in Kawaihae on our Mid-Morning Cruise. Guests on this trip saw too many breaches to keep count. And the activity wasn’t just from one whale either — we saw multiple breaches from 3 different adult Humpbacks, as well as pec slaps from two whales, and a peduncle throw from another. What a ruckus!
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Researchers have observed that female Humpbacks don’t associate with each other at all while they’re in Hawaii. This is especially interesting in light of the fact that the females do associate with each other in Alaska — they’ll even feed cooperatively there. Since the females come here just to mate (and calve), we can postulate that female-female interaction must somehow get in the way of successful mating. Maybe groups of females would attract too many competitive males for safe mating to occur…what do you think?