Humpbacks right below the surface. Image courtesy of Greg Nielson
It’s been awhile since I last posted, mostly because we, along with the entire state of Hawaii, have been experiencing some extremely windy conditions. Whenever the wind blows so hard, we get a lot of questions from guests with exsiting Whale Watch Cruise reservations and guests trying to decide whether to make a cruise reservation about how the wind affects the whales.
Based on our 41 years of experience running these cruises on the Kohala Coast, we’re of the opinion that windy weather = exciting cruises. We’re not quite sure if the wind stirring up the ocean surface actually is exciting to the whales — or that a choppy surface makes it more difficult for whales to communicate with each other so they need to create bigger splashes on the surface (see today’s Fact of the Day for more on that), but regardless of the reason, we really see a lot on windy days. Saying that, when the wind is blowing hard and the ocean is choppy, it’s much more difficult to steer the boat to the magic 100 yard mark to see the whales close up.
So…though we had to cancel a few cruises over the last few days, when we were able to get out, the whale watching was great. And when the wind lays down for awhile, the Humpbacks seem to calm down too. Case in point…on Friday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise, the entire guest list was made up of the keiki and chaperones from The Learning Center (a private school based on the other side of the island). I spent quite a bit of time on Thursday talking with the head of the school about the pros and cons of having everyone have to leave their houses at 5:30 AM to get to our side of the island in time for the cruise…only to have the Captain have to cancel due to safety concerns. Luckily the wind cooperated with us on Friday morning and we were able to operate the cruise.
Humpback sightings in the beginning of the cruise were plentiful, but the whales seemed to be mirroring the weather — very calm. In the last 30 minutes of the trip though, a couple of big adult Humpbacks decided that Seasmoke and the keiki aboard were worth investigaing. We watched as these 2 Humpbacks swam RIGHT under us – at first at our bow, and then later at our stern. These whales were only about 10 feet below the surface, so as they watched us walk quickly across the decks to keep them in sight (no running on deck allowed), we got great glimpses of them too. One of them even spent a moment resting under the boat and no matter where we were on deck (bow or stern), all we had to do was look down and we could see him looking back up at us.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Humpback whale communication signals comprise two different types: vocal signals, and surface-generated signals such as ‘breaching’ or ‘pectoral slapping’. Back in 2010, researchers reported that humpback whales gradually switched from primarily vocal to primarily surface-generated communication in increasing wind speeds and background noise levels. Why? Surface-generated sounds have energy distributed over a greater frequency range and may be less likely to become confused in periods of high wind-generated noise. Therefore, it may be easier for the whales to communicate to each other by splashing when it’s windy.