Spouting Humpback
Aloha,
I’m excited to bring you our first Whale Report of the season!
We spent this first cruise (our Wake up with the Whales Cruise) with a lone (possibly lonely) younger whale. We saw the whale spouting and diving shortly after leaving the bay — and Captain Sam headed us to the area about 100 yards from where we thought we might see the whale surface again (see today’s Fact of the Day for why we stopped where we did).
About 10 minutes later, we were quite delighted to see “our” whale surface and spout pretty close by to where we had predicted.
Our whale seemed delighted to see us too, because while we sat in idle, he continued to surface closer and closer to us — always spouting several times before sounding.
The whale seemed more curious about us than cautious, and at one point, he surfaced just 10 feet away from our idling boat. Was he bored or just lonely? We’re guessing a little bit of both, because not only did we not see any other whales in the area over the 90 minutes we were at sea, but when we deployed our hydrophone, we didn’t hear any other whales either!
After “our” Humpback learned what he wanted to learn about us, he continued his leisurely cruise up the coast, and we took the opportunity to start our engines and head back to our mooring. On the way in, we watched as a pod of about a dozen Spinner Dolphins veered over to our boat to play for a moment in our wake.
Mahalo,
Claire
This year, we’re scheduling just one dedicated Whale Watch Cruise per day most Mondays thru Saturdays, so I’ll be updating these reports several times each week. If you’d like the reports delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe here.
Whale Fact of the Day: You may have heard that Humpback Whales are no longer on the Endangered Species List…but don’t worry, they’re still protected. In autumn 2016, after researchers were able to determine that the global population of Humpbacks is actually comprised of 14 distinct populations, NOAA removed “our” Humpbacks (and 8 other populations) from the list. In the United States, the protection Humpbacks receive under the Marine Mammal Protection Act has not changed. I’ll provide more info about this protection in the next Whale Report Update.