Aloha,
We woke up to very windy conditions on Friday, but based on all the cruise cancellations we were forced to make on Thursday, we were just relieved the ocean conditions were safe enough to allow us to head out to watch some whales.
Guests on our one and only cruise, our Wake Up with the Whales Cruise, got to see at least 8 different Humpbacks. Four of them were in pods of two, and the other 4 of these whales were seemingly by themselves (at least as far as we could tell — for all we know, all of the whales along our part of the coastline could be thinking that they’re part of one big pod).
As windy as it was, when the Humpbacks spouted at the surface, those spouts dissapated quickly, but we also got to see a lot of dorsal fins and a lot of flukes from sounding whales. The biggest surprise of the day came when a Humpback we hadn’t seen before surfaced just about 50 yards from our bow. We figured he was listening to our engines as we slowly cruised the coastline, and posited that he wanted to take a closer look at us from the surface.
Have a great weekend — I’ll post a recap of our Saturday and Sunday sightings on Monday.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Did today’s close-encounter Humpback really know our boat was 50 yards from him? Probably. Humpbacks have an excellent sense of hearing (they communicate with sound, plus sound travels very well under water), and our boat makes noise as it moves through the water. Interestingly enough, Humpbacks are not able to echolocate — only whales with teeth (odontocetes like dolphins or sperm whales) have that ability.