Spouting at the Surface
Aloha,
We only operated one dedicated Whale Watch Cruise on Thursday – our Mid-Morning Whale Watch Cruise. Guests joining us on this trip saw 3 or 4 different Humpbacks, but we spent most of our time with a Mom and her calf. Mom was on 20 minute dive cycles, so we got a chance to look at her many times. The baby was quite interested in us and made a few close approaches to the boat. We enjoyed watching him glance at us, and we even enjoyed watching Mom veer him away from us. Baby was on the surface to breathe every 4 minutes or so, and in between his attempts to investigate the boat, we got to watch him make several rolling dives down to check in with his Mom.
We’ll be operating a Whale Watch Cruise on Friday, so I’ll post a report on Saturday. After that, due to our precautions concerning COVID-19, we’re not really sure what boats (if any) we’ll be operating for the foreseeable future. I’ll do my best to keep you in the loop, and I’ll post Whale Reports as I can.
Stay safe and healthy,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Researchers have observed that female Humpbacks don’t associate with each other at all while they’re in Hawaii. This is especially interesting in light of the fact that the females do associate with each other in Alaska — they’ll even feed cooperatively there. Since the females come here just to mate (and calve), we can postulate that female-female interaction must somehow get in the way of successful mating. Maybe groups of females would attract too many competitive males for safe mating to occur…what do you think?