Spouting – Image courtesy of Brian Reinsisch
Aloha,
Hope you had a great start to your New Year! The wind was blowing and the ocean was bumpy for our first cruise of 2021, our Friday Mid-Morning Whale Watch Cruise, but we knew it would be safe, and our guests wanted to celebrate the start of the year, so we decided to give it a go. We took a right hand turn out of the bay and motored up into the wind. It wasn’t till we got offshore of the Mauna Lani that we saw our first whale, and this Humpback completely surprised us by surfacing and spouting directly in front of us less than 200 yards away. We watched that whale spout a few times before she sounded, and we continued our attempt to make headway. Once we turned the boat around for our downwind run, it felt like we were on an entirely different ocean. As we relaxed on our cruise back to the bay, we saw multiple whales breaching on the horizon.
We didn’t run a cruise on Sunday, but guests on our Saturday Wake Up with the Whales Cruise were treated to 3 fairly close-by breaches in front of the boat almost immediately after leaving the bay (which means almost everyone aboard was looking in the right direction to see them). After breaching, one of the whales rolled onto her back and slapped her big pectoral flippers on the water. We also saw blows from other whales in the area, and got some great views of their flukes as they sounded.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: A fully grown Humpback Whale can hold his or her breath for around 45 minutes. Usually, that’s not what we observe in Hawaii though. We’re more likely to witness 10-20 minute breath hold dives, and if the whale is really active, s/he surfaces to breathe a lot more frequently.