Peduncle Throw
It sure has been a windy winter, and Monday found us right in the thick of the wind again. When we got to the bay on Monday morning at 6:30, the winds were blowing, but not at any out-of-the-ordinary intensity, so we got the boat ready to go and boarded our guests for our 8:00 departure.
As soon as we got out of the bay we encountered 4 adult Humpbacks who, according to today’s on-board naturalist Dave, “were really going at it”. We watched them body slam each other, roll around each other at the surface, and hit each other with their huge peduncles. We also saw some pec slapping and some diagonal body lunges. And then the wind came up, and the whales, who must have been exhausted by that time, disappeared. After that craziness, we went in search of other Humpbacks and saw a few spouts and a few flukes. Towards the end of the cruise, we came across a Mom and her calf, but they seemed to prefer the relative calm of the underwater world compared to the windy, white-capping conditions at the surface.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Humpback Whales have massive tongues. An 80,000 pound Humpback has a two-ton tongue! If you had a similarly proportioned tongue, and you weighed 150 lbs, your tongue would weigh 7.5 lbs (in actuality it weighs around 3.5 ounces).