Humpback spouting courtesy of Marty Kurpershoek
As our 2022/2023 Whale Season winds down, a lot of people are asking us if we’re still seeing Humpbacks. Short answer: Yep!
Guests joining us on Monday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise spent considerable time with a Mom/Calf pod. Baby was pretty busy learning to be a Humpback, and we got to see him do a couple of head lunges, and roll around on his Mom’s rostrum. We also saw his flukes a few times as he attempted some sounding dives. While we were watching him at our 3:00, a big wanna-be Escort approached the two of them from our 7:00. But there must have been some communication to which we weren’t privy going on between those two adults because we only saw the Escort one time — Mom apparently didn’t invite him to stick around.
On Tuesday’s Mid-Morning Whale Watch Cruise, as we left the harbor, we saw some breaching about 3 miles to our west, but those whales were just too far away for us to visit. Instead, Captain Jason took us north where we eventually spotted spouts from 2 adult Humpbacks. While we were approaching them, we saw more spouts from other whales who turned out to be a Mom and her calf. Our first 2 adult Humpbacks kept cruising and we got to see them on the surface a couple of times about 200 yards away. Meanwhile, baby whale got curious, and Mom let him approach us as close as 50 yards. While these two were underwater, we deployed our hydrophone but didn’t really get to hear much at all. Later in the cruise, we were surprised when a Hammerhead shark cruised past us. And finally, on the way back to the harbor we encountered what we thought at first was a small pod of dolphins, They weren’t acting like Spinner Dolphins, so we guessed we were looking at Bottle Nose dophins. But eventually they came close enough to us that our onboard naturalist Captain Maika got a good look at one of their heads, and based on what he saw, he’s 90% sure we were looking at False Killer Whales!
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Dr. Alison Craig and her associates observed that female Humpbacks in Hawaii with calves in tow swim 75% faster when they’re being chased by males in deep water than when they’re being chased in shallow water. As water depth decreased so did the number of males following the mother, making females most likely to be found alone with their calves in the shallows. So why is this observation important? Dr. Craig suggests that it is unwanted male attention which causes the females and calves to increase their swimming speed, in turn requiring the mothers to supply their calves with more milk to compensate for the extra energy they’ve used. Since the females aren’t feeding in Hawaii, the researchers theorize that these female Humpbacks are actually seeking shallow water not to avoid predators… .but to avoid the energetic consequences of male Humpback sexual harassment!