Happy Valentine’s Day!
Aloha,
We had lots to look at during Thursday’s Wake Up with the Whales Cruise. With Humpbacks spouting to our port, our starboard, our stern, and our bow, we found ourselves faced with one of our favorite dilemmas…which way do we go??!! When we got a chance to deploy the hydrophone, we heard some good sounds…the best we’ve heard since a day or so before that big swell rolled in. Highlights of this cruise were watching a lone Humpback surface and swim right across our bow, and watching multiple breaches. The breaching whales were pretty far from us, but not so far that we only saw the splashes…we could see the whales too.
We saw breaching whales after we left the harbor on the Mid-Morning Whale Watch Cruise, but before we could get to them, we found a Mom/Calf pod in very shallow water (60′) off shore of the Mauna Kea Resort. Baby was in a playful mood (either that, or he was having a calf-tantrum). We watched him do lots of little head lunges and little pec slaps, and we even think we were watching him nursing (they were in such shallow water that we could see their underwater positions easily). Mom surfaced too, spouting every 7 – 10 minutes right next to her baby.
We had a similar experience on our Pau Hana Sunset Cruise with the Whales. We saw spouts as soon as we left the bay, and as we approached those whales, we saw Spinner Dolphins a bit further out to sea. But, we decided to stop and watch the whales…who turned out to be a Mom and her calf. The calf breached a couple of times while we watched, and did several tail lobs too. Mom wasn’t as active, but we did get to see her lift her huge flukes one time when she began her sounding dive.
Mahalo and have a great weekend. I’ll send out a recap of our weekend sightings on Monday.
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 Valentine’s Day!