Humpbacks pay a visit to Alala. Click on the picture to watch the video.
Aloha,
We went out on a lot of cruises since the last report, so here are just a few highlights:
- On Friday’s Wake Up with the Whales Cruise, Humpbacks were spouting all over the place. We saw a whale breach at our 12:00 about 150 yards away, and while we were headed to him, a different whale breached at our 9:00 about 75 yards away, so of course we stopped the boat, hoping for another breach. We weren’t disappointed (but honestly, we were really surprised) when our first breacher decided to breach again at our 11:00…just about 60 feet from us, and though it’s difficult to believe, we were all looking in the correct direction to see it.
- Guests on Friday’s Mid-Morning Whale Watch Cruise spent some time getting to know a Momma whale and her calf. As usual, we saw quite a bit more of the baby than we did of Mom, and if there was an escort lurking around, he held his breath the entire time we were watching.
- The surf and the winds were up during our Snorkel & Whale Watch Adventure Cruise, so we gave our guests the option of rescheduling. Those people who decided to brave the weather got quite the whale show. After watching several spouts from a calf (we never really got to see his body…or anything of Mom) we watched a very a active competitive pod a bit further away. The strong winds meant we couldn’t get close to them, but we saw multiple breaches and a lot of commotion on the surface from those whales.
- On our way out to see some Humpbacks breaching repetitively a couple of miles away from us during Saturday’s Wake Up with the Whales Cruise, we were first surprised by a pod of Spinner Dolphins who accompanied us for awhile. Our next surprise happened when a whale surfaced, spouted and sounded close by at our 10:00. While we were waiting for him to surface again, we deployed the hydrophone and the sounds we heard were so loud and so clear that we actually had to turn the volume down on our speakers. After watching “our” whale surface and spout again, we began to make our way back to the bay, and we were surprised yet again, when a different whale surfaced and spouted at our 11:00 about 60 yards from us. While we were waiting for this whale to surface again, we were surprised a fourth time by a different whale who surfaced at our 11:30, and then again at our 12:00…this time, just 20 feet off our bow.
- The highlight of Saturday’s Mid-Morning Whale Watch Cruise was watching Momma Humpback and her calf watching us from underneath the boat. Want to know what that’s like? Click on the picture in today’s report!
- Guests on Sunday’s Wake Up with the Whales Cruise got to see several spouts from various Humpbacks, but we spent the bulk of our trip watching a Mom/Baby pod. Baby made several appearances, and it was interesting to note the differences in size and activity levels between the two of them.
- We saw spouts and/or flukes from 5 different whales during Sunday’s Mid-Morning Whale Watch Cruise. The first of these Humpbacks had surfaced between the channel markers in the entrance of the harbor. As we didn’t want to block the harbor entrance, we couldn’t really stick around to watch him.. None of the other whales we saw on the trip ever surfaced close to us (all about 400 yards away), so we called the trip a “Fluke”, and offered everyone aboard another chance to join us again for FREE. We did see one other interesting thing during this cruise. We found a turtle on the surface being circled by a 10 foot tiger shark. While we watched, the shark never attacked the turtle, but as fascinated as some of us were, we weren’t able to stay in the area to find out the ultimate outcome of their interactions..
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Being mammals, a Humpback has a belly button (or as we say in Hawaii, a “piko”) – in case you’re wondering, it’s an “innie”.