Aloha,
Monday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise started out a bit slow. Sure, we were seeing spouts but all of those spouting Humpbacks were kind of far away, and none of them seemed to be staying on the surface for very long. We took advantage of the quiet time to deploy the hydrophone, and we got to hear a lot of different whale voices.
As the cruise continued, we saw even more spouting, but again, these whales weren’t all that close to us. Towards the end of the cruise, Captain Will was talking about the whales from the helm, and everyone onboard was looking at him and also at the stern of the boat when out of nowhere a Humpback breached just 75 yards behind the boat. And that was quickly followed by a double breach at our 6:00 about 300 yards away…and again, everyone aboard was looking in the right place to see the action (a rare occurence for sure).
We took a poll and no one aboard had any particular place they had to be in the imminent future, so we decided to stay out a bit past our scheduled time. Good thing we did because as we were finally returning to the bay, not one, but two Humpbacks decided to surface right next to the boat giving everyone great views of them as they got great views of us.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Were the Humpbacks who surfaced right next to us today really looking at our boat? Short answer: probably. Though Humpbacks rely on their sense of hearing far more than any other sense, we do know that vision is also important to them. Based on the shape of the Humpbacks’ corneas, they can certainly see us…but, they’re probably a bit farsighted when looking through water and a bit nearsighted when looking through the air. And in case anyone asks you, Humpbacks have beautiful brown eyes. Their eyeballs weigh, on average, 2.16 pounds. Human eyeballs weigh about a quarter of an ounce.