Humpbacks Charge Past the Boat
Oh my…we sure saw a lot during Wednesday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise. Besides the sheer number of whales in our vicinity (we estimate 2 dozen), these whales were really active. We spent all 90 minutes of our cruise with a competitive pod of 6 adult Humpbacks. We got to watch lots of body slams, lots of twisty, turny dives, lots of fluke dives, and heard lots of heavy breathing from this group. When our necks got tired looking in one direction at them, all we had to do was turn our heads to the other side of the boat where a pod of 2 other Humpbacks were hanging out. When we looked out about 4 miles, we could clearly see a Humpback lobbing his tail — we counted 20 slaps on the surface of the water from this guy, but there could have been more. Admist all the excitement, we found a moment to deploy our hydrophone, and we picked up some very loud sounds from close-by Humpbacks, and of course a whole bunch of fainter sounds from other whales scattered about the coastline.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Before whaling was banned internationally, Humpback whales’ livers were processed for their oil, which contained a lot of vitamin A. A fully grown Humpback has a liver that weighs between 800 and 1400 pounds. An adult human’s liver averages between 3.2 and 3.7 lbs. (which means our livers are proportionally the same size to our overall body weight as theirs are to their body weight).