Spinner Dolphins
Aloha,
Guests on Tuesday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise got to see Odontocetes (toothed whales) and Mysticetes (baleen whales). We started our cruise watching a Mom/Calf Humpback pod to the north of the bay. Both of them were underwater a lot more than they were on the surface, so after waiting to see them through a few breathing cycles, we turned the boat and headed south. We soon found ourselves surrounded by a big pod of active Spinner Dolphins. We know that Spinners use their daylight hours to rest, and we really didn’t want to disturb them, but they accompanied us for quite awhile as we cruised along the coastline, playing in our bow and stern wakes and swimming alongside of us. Then, we saw spouts again to our north, so we turned around again, and found a different Mom/Calf pod. This baby was on the surface a bit more than the first baby we had seen, and we also got to watch him make several adorable dives down to his waiting Mom. She surfaced a few times while we watched too…but if they were accompanied by an Escort, he never made his presence known to us.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Where do the Humpbacks go when they migrate away from Hawaii? Most of them appear to migrate directly north, to feeding grounds off of northern British Columbia and southeastern Alaska waters. But they can migrate to just about any location around the Pacific Rim — one humpback satellite-tagged in Hawaii spent the summer in Russian waters.