Humpbacks Pay Us a Visit
Our Tuesday Mid-Morning Whale Watch Cruise from Kawaihae was one of those cruises that just kept getting better and better.
We found 2 Humpbacks just after exiting the harbor. Initially, these two were on 20 minute dive cycles, but since we weren’t seeing much else around us, Captain Jason made the decision to stick with them. This turned out to be a great choice, because the longer we were with them, the shorter their dive cycles became. Towards the end of the cruise these two surfaced close by and we could tell they were both HUGE whales (more than 40′ long). We had a bunch of children aboard the cruise, and when the kids started yelling to encourage the whales, the whales passed by, clearing trying to figure out what all the fuss aboard the boat was about. After that pass-by, they disappeared again for a moment — we all wondered whether they had left us for good, but then our depth finder alarm started pinging which meant they were RIGHT below us. When these two big whales surfaced the next time, they were so close to us that we all got sprayed by their spouts!
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Every once in awhile, one of our guests challenges us to explain how we know that the whales who spend their entire lives in the water aren’t actually fish, but are in fact, mammals. Here’s how we know: whales are warm blooded (their body temperature is about the same as ours 97 –99 degrees Fahrenheit), they have live births, they have body hair (humpbacks actually have whiskers called vibrissae), and they lactate.