Scrimshaw
Aloha,
Monday was “Calf-Day” on the Kohala Coast. We ran 3 different cruises from two different locations, but guests on all of these trips got some great views of the next generation of Humpbacks.
On our Mid-Morning Cruise, a Mom/Calf/Escort trio spent considerable time paralleling our boat, and at one point, surfacing fairly close to us to investigate us. Baby was on the surface every 5 minutes or so, and we got to watch him make some cute, uncoordinated dives down to him Mom. We didn’t see her or the Escort nearly as much, but when they surfaced it was interesting to see just how much bigger they were than that baby.
Meanwhile, guests on Manu Iwa’s Exclusive Snorkel Adventure Cruise also got to see a baby Humpback. We weren’t sure if this Baby and Mom were accompanied by an Escort (sometimes it’s difficult to tell exactly which adult is surfacing), but we got some nice views of these whales as they accompanied us on our way to our snorkel site.
Later in the day, we operated an Exclusive Trade Winds Sail on Seasmoke. Guests on this cruise got to see…you guessed it…a baby Humpback with his Mom. This may have been the same Mom/Baby pod we were looking at during our Snorkel Cruise as they were the same relative sizes and we found them in the same general location. Again, we couldn’t tell for sure if they were accompanied by an Escort. If they weren’t, Mom was surfacing a bit further away from her calf than what we see usually, but we may have been seeing the Escort’s spout every once in awhile too.
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Starting out as a way to pass time between whale sightings and hunts on the whaling ships in the mid-18th century, “scrimshawing” (or the art of carving intricate designs on to whale teeth, bones and baleen) survived until the ban on commercial whaling went into effect. The etched designs were originally produced by sailors using sailing needles, and were colored with candle soot and tobacco juice to bring the designs into view. Today, hobbyists still create scrimshaw — but they use bones and tusks from non-endangered and non-protected animal species like camels, buffalo and even warthogs. See the image above for an example of one intricately carved piece of scrimshaw.