Humpback Calf Breaches
Aloha,
We woke up to a windy day on Tuesday, but guests aboard our Wake up with the Whales Cruise still got to see about a dozen different Humpbacks. Most of them were several hundred yards away, and as soon as they would surface and breathe, the visible parts of their spouts would dissipate in the wind. But saying that, we did get to see a few flukes as the whales sounded to get below the all that turbulent water on the surface. And a couple of these sounding whales were only about 100 yards from us.
Up in Kawaihae, the Kohala mountains provided a lee, so we weren’t battling the same northerly winds as we experienced outside of Anaeho’omalu. Guests on our Mid-Morning Cruise got to know a Mom/Baby pod. Baby surfaced to spout plenty of times in between making a lot of dives down to her Mom, and we even got to see Mom quite a few times. Baby may have been nursing, because towards the end of our cruise, she seemed to feel the need to burn off some energy. We watched as she breached adorably nine different times!
Mahalo
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: We used to think that the whales that arrived on the coast of the Big Island spent their Hawaii-time here with us. Research and close observation of individuals has proved us wrong. While the Humpbacks seem to prefer to spend most of their time on the lee sides of islands and in water less than 600 feet deep, they will travel between the islands (not in any particular direction that we’re aware of)…females who have calves travel less frequently though.