Flukes – Image courtesy of Rodger Berge
Aloha,
Guests on Monday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise got the opportunity to meet a Mom/Calf duo. We first spotted them on the surface several hundred yards from us. As we motored their way, they both disappeared, so we “parked” the boat and took advantage of the calm ocean conditions to lower our hydrophone. After listening to lots of nice whale voices, and just as we were pulling the hydrophone back out of the water, our duo surfaced and spouted again. When we glanced around, we saw spouts here and there, but our main focus on this cruise was watching Momma Humpback take care of her calf.
Guests on our Snorkel & Whale Watch Adventure got to see Humpbacks both before and after snorkeling. As we motored to our snorkel site, we encountered a Mom and calf and watched them surface and spout, but we had to cut the whale watching short as we had some snorkeling to do! On our way back to the bay after snorkeling, we found a Mom/Calf/Escort pod. As we watched, this trio was approached by two “wanna-be” escorts but we never got to see whether they eventually challenged that primary escort. We got some great views of Mom and her baby though, because not only was baby on the surface every 3 or 4 minutes, but both of them chose to approach us to check us out. We also got some great “fluke-views” when each of those 3 big males sounded.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Humpback whales can’t cry — they don’t have tear ducts (they don’t need them — their eyes are always bathed in salt water) but they do have glands on their outer corneas which secrete an oily substance that helps to protect their eyes from debris in the ocean.