Aloha,
The wind we’ve been talking about for the last two weeks FINALLY calmed down for our Wednesday Whale Watch Cruises. Guests on our Wake up with the Whales Cruise got to watch two different competitive pods. Though it’s pretty difficult to determine how many whales were in each pod (at least it it from our vantage point) our onboard naturalist DJ estimated that each pod was composed of 6 Humpbacks. When you get that many whales interacting, it’s always exciting to watch. We got to see lots and lots of tail lobs, and some aggressive peduncle throws from them, but probably the craziest thing we got to see was a full breach just 100 yards off our bow. When we weren’t watching the competitive pods, we got to see spouts and flukes from probably a dozen and a half other whales all within about 3 miles from the bay.
Guests joining us on Thursday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise saw a wide variety of Humpback interactions and surface behaviors. We saw 2 different competitive pods chasing across the surface — one of these pods stayed about 150 yards from us but the other pod cruised past us about 100 yards away. When we weren’t watching those whales, we saw some huge pec slaps from a lone Humpback about 500 yards from us and 4 different breaches from a lone Humpback about 300 yards from us. Oh, and we also got a great view of a Momma whale and her calf when they swam down our port side just about 5 yards away (we were in idle at that time). Towards the end of the cruise a different Mom/calf duo surfaced 150 yards from us but unfortunately we didn’t have time to investigate.
Finally on Thursday’s Late Morning Whale Watch, we saw several spouts from Humpbacks but were never able to get close to any of them on the surface. When we deployed the hydrophone, we heard a lot of different Humpback voices so we know a lot of whales were in our area…but that wasn’t good enough for us, so we called the trip a “Fluke” and invited everyone aboard to join us again for another Whale Watch Cruise for FREE!
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Humpbacks can maintain a consistent body temperature even when swimming in cold Alaskan waters. How do they do that? Besides their protective layer of blubber, they actually have something called a “counter current” circulatory system. Some arteries in their flippers, flukes, and dorsal fin are surrounded by veins, allowing some heat from the blood traveling through the arteries to be transferred to the venous blood returning to their hearts, instead of being lost to the environment.