Mom and Baby Breach Together – Image courtesy of Captain Ryan
Guests on our Wednesday Wake Up with the Whales Cruise got quite the show! We first saw some splashing to the west (straight offshore) of Anaeho’omalu Bay and of course, headed over to investigate. The splashing turned out to be from a Mom/Baby duo. We don’t know if Mom was trying to teach her baby how to breach, or if the baby was just too excited to control himself and had to breach multiple times and that irritated Mom enough to make her breach, or maybe Mom was playing with her calf…but regardless of the reason, we watched this duo breach multiple times, and even a few times at the same time. Baby was definitely interested in our boat (maybe he was listening to all us excited people on deck) and approached us to take a look several times. Mom was either permissive (or too exhausted to care), because she let him get close — of course she was a good Mom, and she approached us too, not letting her little one get too far from her reach. After Mom and baby quenched their curiosity, they continued to head out to deeper water, so we decided it would be a good time to see if there were other whales in the area. We eventually saw a spout to our south and a bit closer to shore. This spout turned out to be from a lone adult Humpback who, as we watched, continued to head south.
When we found time to deploy our hydrophone, the sounds we heard were pretty faint, so we knew there were other lone Humpbacks further out to sea.
Mahalo
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Though you probably know by now that Humpbacks don’t have teeth to help break down their food, have you ever stopped to think how they can so efficiently digest the thousand pounds of food they eat daily in Alaska? It all has to do with their compartmentalized 3 – part stomachs. The first part, called the “forestomach” or “rumen” uses strong muscular contractions to begin to break the food down. The food then moves into the “cardiac stomach” where acids and enzymes are produced to further liquefy it. The partially digested food then moves through a narrow tube into the “pylorus” where mucus is added to help the food slide through the intestines. Since cetaceans don’t have gall bladders, their huge livers supply the bile they need for lipid (fat) digestion, and their very long intestines (up to 5 times the length of their bodies) allow for adequate nutrient absorption.