Aloha,
We only operated one Guaranteed Whale Watch Cruise on Tuesday — our Wake Up with the Whales Cruise departing from Kawaihae Harbor. We saw our first spout about 800 yards away from the entrance to the harbor, so we headed that way. Of course our spouter disappeared from sight before we could get to him, but Captain Sam stopped the boat in the general area where the whale had been and when our whale resurfaced again he had travelled another 300 yards or so away.
We started to head over to him, but before we could get there, we saw two pretty forceful spouts a bit closer so we chose to check those whales out instead. As we arrived in their vicinity we realized we were looking at least 3 (maybe 4) big Humpbacks. These whales weren’t interacting much where we could see them, but every time they did pop up, they were breathing hard, huffing and puffing, so we guessed there was a lot going on underwater that we couldn’t see. Our pod was on 12 – 15 minute dives so we got to see them 4 times — and the second to the last time they startled us by surfacing just about 30 yards from our idling boat.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: When a Humpback spouts, he’s exhaling in a half of a second, 90% of the volume of air in his lungs. It’s enough air in one blow to fill up the interior of a stretch limousine. In case you’re curious, when an average size human adult exhales, he takes 3 times as long to exhale just 15% of the volume of air in his lungs — and an adult human exhalation wouldn’t even fill up a Smart Car — it’s only enough air to fill up a lunch bag.