Aloha,
We didn’t operate any dedicated Whale Watch Cruises on Sunday…but guests on both of our Saturday Cruises got to see (and listen to) quite a bit. Our Saturday Wake up with the Whales Cruise began with a Spinner Dolphin escort. This pod of dolphins must have heard us leave the bay because it wasn’t too long after we got past the mouth of the bay before they swam over and surrounded us. They spent some time playing in our wake before veering back out to sea. After that surprise, we found a Mom Humpback and her very young calf. Baby had a bent over dorsal fin, and though he was kind of squirmy at the surface, for most of the trip that’s really all he was doing. While we were watching this duo, we saw a couple of big spouts from some other Humpbacks, so we left our Mom/calf to investigate. It turned out that these big Humpbacks were on 30 minute dive cycles, so we didn’t get to see much of them. Towards the end of our cruise, we found Mom and baby again, and this time we were completely surprised when they both breached (and we were all looking in the correct direction to see the whole thing).
Guests on our Late-Morning Whale Watch Cruise also got to know a Mom/calf duo. Based on our observations of the calf, we figured he was really, really young (bent over dorsal fin and very light gray in color). We spotted a smaller adult Humpback very close to Mom and baby, but not close enough that we could say for sure whether he was a true escort (maybe he was a “wanna’be” escort). Later in the cruise we were surprised by a lone Humpback who surfaced and then immediately disappeared about 50 yards off our bow. Oh…and during both cruises, we had time to deploy our hydrophone, and on both cruises we heard lots of close-by Humpback voices.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Researchers have observed that Humpback calves are very playful, investigating all kinds of objects in their environment (including our boat), interacting with their moms, and even interacting with passing pods of dolphins. But for as many calves as we see in Hawaii during the winter, we never have observed the calves playing with each other. Though we’re not sure why this is, perhaps the new moms won’t allow a calf not her own to approach, because she doesn’t want to feed the wrong one.