Humpback’s Blowholes
We’ve had our share of wintery weather the past couple of days, but since the whales don’t seem to mind a little rain and some wind, we don’t either!
Guests on Tuesday’s Mid-Morning Cruise spent considerable time with a lone Humpback who was on 5 minute dives. This whale didn’t seem to be headed in any particular direction so we got to see him surface and spout really often.
On Wednesday’s Wake Up with the Whales Cruise we got to see 4 different whales. We started the cruise watching a lone sub-adult Humpback spouting and diving. We were able to watch him through 3 dive cycles — each culminating in a shallow, “no-flukes” dive. After that, we found a duo (probably Mom and her one-year-old, based on their relative sizes). These two were also just cruising around – surfacing, spouting and doing shallow dives for the most part. We watched them for awhile until our younger whale decided to finally do a flukes-up dive, signaling to us that he would be underwater for awhile. On the way back to the bay, we got to watch one more lone whale spouting a few times and then sounding on the starboard side of the boat, close enough that we all got a great view of his blowholes.
Before we even left our mooring for Wednesday’s Snorkel & Whale Watch Adventure, we got to see a whale tail-lobbing outside of the bay. By the time we got out of the bay he had stopped, but on the way to our snorkel site, we encountered a Mom/Yearling duo. This time, we got to watch the younger of the two surface at our 6:00. Of course we shut down our engines immediately as he was CLOSE…in fact, this whale swam within about 40 yards of us. After snorkeling we saw 2 other Humpback duos spouting and diving and to top it off, we also got to watch a lone whale breach several times before tuckering out, lifting his flukes, and sounding.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: An average size adult Humpback has 2 oval shaped blowholes that measure about 9 inches in diameter (on the bigger part of the oval). The whales use them like you use your nostrils, exhaling through both before inhaling. If an average size human had nostril openings in the same proportion to his size as a whale’s blowholes are to the whale’s body size, each human nostril would measure about an inch and a quarter in diameter (go ahead and measure yours…we know you’re curious)!