A bit of Humpback Interaction – Image courtesy of Andrea Spallanzani
Aloha,
Our Monday Wake Up with the Whales Cruise started off with a series of double breaches from a pair of whales a couple thousand yards from us…and then the cruise got even better. While we were sitting and listening to some very loud songs through our hydrophone, we saw a lot of splashing and a lot of spouts, so we pulled up the microphone and went over to investigate. It turned out that what we were seeing was a competitive pod of 5 big Humpbacks. These whales were chasing each other around a lot…and when we got about 150 yards from them, we put the boat in neutral. The whales must have heard us coming (or maybe they just saw us), but regardless, the whale in the lead decided to use us try to shake her followers. All of them circled the boat several times, at one point, surfacing just 15 feet off our bow. When we could tear our eyes away from the action, we did see spouts from several other whales, but we stuck with our competitive pod for most of the cruise.
We saw lots of spouts from whales in every direction during our Snorkel & Whale Watch Adventure Cruise. On the way to our snorkel site, we encountered a Mom/Baby pod and spent some time watching them just swimming together along the coastline. On the way back from snorkeling we watched as a lone Humpback surfaced in front of us, swam towards us, and then cruised right under the boat. He was close enough to the surface that we could easily see his whole body — especially when he was under our stern — but he didn’t choose to surface and spout again till he was about 50 feet behind us.
Guests on our Pau Hana Sunset Cruise with the Whales also got to see spouts in every direction we looked. We spent some quality time with a pod of 3 adult whales who were cruising along the coastline. One of them was definitely leading (or being chased by) the other two. We didn’t see a lot of posturing from these three but they were certainly interacting.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: In the early part of the 19th century, whales were hunted for more than just their blubber (which was used primarily as lamp oil). The meat was used mainly for fertilizer, the baleen was used for umbrella and corset stays, and their organs were processed to extract vitamins.