A Bit of a Recap

Humpback Whale Sightings and Statistics|February 13, 2023

“Shark-finning”

Aloha,

If you read my Monday post, you know I spent a lot of it talking about the wind and how it might affect the whales. So much that I didn’t get around to telling you what we’ve been seeing all weekend long.

The highlight of Saturday’s Mid-Morning Whale Watch Cruise from Kawaihae was watching a competitive pod of 3 Humpbacks chasing a 4th. We assume the whale in front was female, and the rest weren’t. We got to see peduncle throws, lunges, partial breaching, “sharking” (that’s when the whale swims on his side and only part of half of his fluke is above the surface — looks like a shark fin — see the image above). Towards the end of the trip, 2 of the pursuers veered off — leaving just one who was pursuing, and one who was pursued.

On Sunday’s Private Whale Watch Cruise from Kawaihae, we got to see lots of spouts and lots of flukes. We even saw a couple of breaches (but none of those were very close to us). Just when we thought the fun was over, a lone Humpback surfaced right at our stern, suprising us, as he clearly looked at us.

On Monday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise from Anaeho’omalu, we spent some quality time with a Mom/calf duo. These two took a close-up look at us, surfacing just 20′ from our boat. We also saw a Humpback breach 6 times at our stern. And, while we were watching 2 pods of 2 outside of us, another pod of 2 surfaced right near the boat on the inside.

Mahalo,

Claire

Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: A Humpback Whale has a big heart. An 80,000 pound whale’s heart averages just over 400 pounds, and according to measurements made by the Nelson Institute of Marine Research, beats an average of somewhere between 10 and 30 times per minute. Happy Valentines Day!