Mahalo to our good friend Carolyn F. for sharing this image of a Humpback calf paying us a visit!
Aloha,
We had lots of fun stuff to watch with the whales on Wednesday. We had barely left the bay at the beginning of our Wake Up with the Whales Cruise when we saw our first spouts. In fact we really didn’t know which way to look, as there were whales to our port side and whales in front of us. We spent considerable time with a Mom/Calf duo. Baby was curious enough to approach the boat for a good look, and Mom was permissive enough to let him do it. It probably wasn’t Mom’s “first rodeo” as she didn’t cut between her little guy and us, letting him explore on his own. Throughout the course of this cruise, we must have seen 3 different Mom/calf pods along with spouts from several other adult Humpbacks.
We took some guests out for a Private Snorkel & Whale Watch Cruise right after that first cruise. On the way to our snorkel site, we saw spouts here and there but our closest encounter came when a Mom/Calf pod surfaced at our 11:00 and then swam right around the boat, just under the surface of the water. Watching them, our head naturalist Greg saw a third whale with them (an escort) and eventually after circling the boat, all three of them surfaced and spouted before heading away – apparently these 3 had learned what they wanted to learn about us.
Finally, guests on our Pau Hana Sunset Cruise spent some time watching a very active Mom and her calf on the surface. Mom was doing a lot of peduncle throws, and the baby was splashing around all over the place doing all kinds of adorable (and possibly uncoordinated) surface behaviors. While this was going on, 2 other adult Humpbacks swung by. We thought they might join our Mom and calf but they kept on swimming. On the way back to the bay, we were completely surprised when a single Humpback surfaced and spouted about 20 feet from our 3:00 (starboard rail). None of us had any idea he was there, and of course we immediately stopped the boat. Our “surprise whale” surfaced and spouted again, but this time he was behind us, so we continued to head home.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Though it’s difficult to believe, until last season, no one had EVER seen a Humpback whale giving birth. Everything changed just over a year ago though, when a pregnant Humpback began circling a zodiac off the coast of Maui, and the people aboard had an underwater video camera. Click here to read the story and see the video.