Footprints
Some of our guests on Wednesday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise started seeing whales before the cruise even started. While we were still on the mooring, these lucky guests were looking at the right place at the right time to see 2 Humpbacks breach just about a quarter mile outside of the bay. So of course, as soon as we were underway we knew which way we wanted to go. We paralleled these two whales for about 2 miles and got to see the whales surface, spout and dive 3 different times. The whales were moving at a good clip, and because they were underwater about 15 minutes each time they dove, we never really knew where they’d pop up again. The closest they got to us was about 200 yards, and eventually we realized that if stayed on the same course as they were on, we’d never get back to the bay before our cruise time was up. So, we made the difficult decision to leave these travelers and look for other Humpbacks.
When we were still about 3 miles away from the bay we saw our last Humpback of the day’s cruise spouting about 500 yards from us.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: The smooth round flat spot we see on the water after a whale dives is called the “footprint”. Whalers thought it was caused by oil from the whale’s skin calming the surface of the water, but water samples have proven that theory to be false. When a whale dives (or kicks just below the surface) his flukes break the surface tension of the water and create a vertical wake, forming the circular footprint.