Splash-landing after a Breach
Guests on Monday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise got to listen to the Humpbacks singing BEFORE we even deployed our hydrophone. As soon as we turned off our engines during this cruise, we could hear the sounds reverberating through the hulls (for more on this, see today’s Fact of the Day). Of course we opened up a couple of our deck hatches so we could hear the songs even more clearly…and when we finally put our microphone in the water, we had to turn the volume down on our speakers so that these close-by singers wouldn’t blow out our onboard sound system.
While we were listening, we were scanning all around us to see if we could find the singers, but no one surfaced close by. In fact, even though we saw a lot of Humpbacks during the cruise, most of the sightings were just “blows and goes”.
But as we’ve always said, “it’s not over ’til it’s over”…and just as we were about to return to the bay, we were completely surprised when a juvenile Humpback (who we didn’t know was in the area) breached 3 times just about 30 feet from the boat. Incredible.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: As proven during today’s cruise, we don’t always need to deploy our hydrophone to hear the whales singing. When singing whales are very close to the boat, their songs reverberate through the hulls. Is this experience responsible for the origin of the Greek myth of the sirens? In Greek mythology, sirens were the beautiful creatures who lured sailors with their enchanting music to crash on their islands. Now imagine you were a sailor in 2000 BC, listening to these haunting sounds in the hold of your ship…who (or what) would you think was responsible for their creation? We’re pretty sure that Humpbacks wouldn’t have even made the list.