Aloha,
The surf was up on Saturday and though we’re not positive that the swell-induced surge in the shallower areas closer to shore is what prompted the whales to move further out to sea, but it wasn’t until we were a couple of miles from shore that we finally spotted them. And when we did find those whales…wow.
Our first sighting on our Wake Up with the Whales Cruise was of a lone Humpback who surprised us by surfacing just off our stern. After this whale spouted, Captain Will stopped the boat, and while we were all looking aft our whale breached just about 15 feet behind us. Later, we met a couple of different Mom/Baby/Escort pods. One of these pods actually had two Escorts, and we watched them jockey for position trying to get closer to Mom (meanwhile, she was doing her best to keep her baby in front of her and out of the fray).
On our Late-Morning Whale Watch Cruise, we met two other Mom/Baby Escort pods. One of these babies was very young (we know because his dorsal fin was all floppy indicating a recent passage through Mom’s birth canal). The baby in the other Mom/Baby/Escort pod was very curious about us. We watched him try to approach us from all different angles, only to be redirected by Mom and the Escort every time. Just before we had to leave this trio we saw a lot of turbulence on the water followed by the surfacing of the Escort nearby, while Mom and her calf disappeared. Was he trying to divert our attention so they could escape? Or did Mom take advantage of the Escort’s interest in us to give him the slip? It’s impossible to know for sure, but that doesn’t stop us from at least attempting to interpret what’s happening in front of us (in case you’re wondering, the general consensus onboard was that the Escort was attempting to protect Mom and baby).
The Humpbacks weren’t awake at the beginning of our Sunday Wake Up with the Whales Cruise. We saw a lot of spouts in various directions, but it wasn’t until we came across a competitive pod of 6 whales that we were able to observe any interactions between the whales, and even this pod wasn’t interacting very aggressively at the surface. At one point they completely disappeared from sight, and we were all scanning in every direction to see if we could spot them surfacing again. Our naturalist DJ just happened to look down and saw one of these 6 swimming just about 20 feet under the surface, heading towards our bow. As the whale got close, he headed deeper and we all lost track of him. Later in the cruise we saw splashes from whales breaching, but we weren’t able to get very close to any of them.
Guests on our Late-Morning Whale Watch got to see one of the larger competitive pods we’ve ever seen. This group of 10 or maybe 12 Humpbacks (when there are that many whales together it’s impossible to count) were charging down the coastline offshore of the Mauna Lani Resort. We got to see them motor-boating at the surface — a term which describes pretty much exactly what you’d imagine — picture the wake created by a dozen 35 ton boats speeding across the ocean with their bows crashing up out of the water and then back down again and you’ll get the idea. We also saw a different whale peduncle-throwing (that’s the term we use to describe the whale throwing the entire bottom half of his body out of the water) and we even got a glimpse of a shark. Captain Sam was pretty sure it was a hammerhead, but the shark took a dive before we could get close enough to identify it for sure.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: In the early part of the 19th century, whales were hunted for more than just their blubber (which was used primarily as lamp oil). The meat was used mainly for fertilizer, the baleen was used for umbrella and corset stays, and their organs were processed to extract vitamins.but