Humpback Calf Looks at Us
Aloha,
We began our Tuesday Mid-Morning Whale Watch Cruise positioned right between two Mom/Calf/Escort pods. It was kind of unusual to see these two pods so close together, but as is par for the course, the pods weren’t interacting with each other — and of course we saw a lot more of the calves than we did of their Moms or the Moms’ Escorts. The calves were diving and surfacing at different times, and one of them was up much more frequently than the other, so there was a lot for us to keep track of. While we watched all these whales, we took the opportunity to deploy our hydrophone and heard quite a few loud and clear whale voices.
After watching our two pods for awhile, we saw some splashing further up the coastline, so we pulled up the hydrophone and headed over to investigate. It turned out that the splashing was from yet another calf. This little guy breached at least 10 times — maybe 15 times — while we watched, and luckily for us, we reached our magic 100 yard mark in time to watch the last of the breaches, so we got some really good views of one of the newest members of the next generation of Humpbacks.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Though most of us on Whale Watch Cruises in Hawaii are here to see the Humpback Whales, according to our friends at Cascadia Research Collective there are actually 18 species of Odontocetes (toothed whales) and 7 species of Mysticetes (whales with baleen) that have been documented in Hawaiian waters.