Head Lunge – Image courtesy of Rodger Berge
Aloha,
Guests on Wednesday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise got to see spouts and/or dorsal fins and/or flukes from about a dozen different Humpbacks all between 100 and 400 yards from the boat. All of these whales were in pods of twos or threes, and most of them were just going about their business with each other, being whales. We saw a couple of sub-adult whales (about 35 feet long) breach and head lunge several times, and we got multiple views of a Mom/Baby/Escort pod. Baby was really small and on the surface a lot. Mom and the Escort also surfaced several times as we watched.
Guests on our Mid-Morning Cruise also saw about a dozen different whales. We watched one whale breach 6 times (though he was about 500 yards from us). We also got to see a lot of tail lobs and pec slaps from other excited whales. Later in the trip, we cruised down towards the Mauna Kea Resort, where a pod of 2 Humpbacks apparently found us worth investigating. They circled the boat a couple of times as they took glimpses of us and we got great views of them.
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 30 times per minute. Happy Valentines Day!