Aloha,
Guests on Tuesday’s Wake Up with the Whales Cruise got to know a lone Humpback pretty well. We found this whale to the south of the harbor, and since we weren’t seeing spouts from anyone else in the neighborhood, Captain Sam chose to stay with him.
We got to see this whale a LOT during our cruise as every time he surfaced from one of his dives, he re-oxygenated by inhaling (and exhaling) 5 or more times (that’s a lot of surface time). It kind of made sense though, as he was holding his breath through 20 minute long dives.
While “our” whale was underwater, we took the opportunity to deploy our hydrophone and based on the volume and clarity of what were hearing, we knew that it was our whale doing all that singing (also, the singing stopped abruptly just before our whale surfaced — another indication that it was his voice we were hearing). Oh, and since we had the hydrophone in the water, Captain Sam turned off the engines (we could have heard the song over the sounds of the engines, but it’s much nicer to listen without all that background noise)…and twice we were surprised when the whale surfaced just 50 yards away from us.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: A fully grown Humpback Whale can hold his or her breath for around 45 minutes. Usually, that’s not what we observe in Hawaii though. We’re more likely to witness 10-20 minute breath hold dives, and if the whale is really active, s/he surfaces to breathe a lot more frequently.