Aloha,
We began Tuesday’s Wake Up with the Whales Cruise paralleling a kind of lazy competitive pod who we saw as soon as we exited the bay. We got to see some tail lobs from a couple of them and a pec slap or two. We also spotted some lunging, but these whales didn’t appear to be heading anywhere with conviction…just cruising slowly to the south. We tried to see if there was a Mom/calf in the front of the group, but based on spout sizes (and the glimpses we got of their bodies) it appeared that this pod consisted of 4 adults. We all agreed that the highlight of the cruise happened after a pretty long dive from the group when one of them surfaced RIGHT next to us and spouted. We were lucky that he was on the downwind side of the boat or we all would have gotten sprayed. The water was really, really clear, so we could see his entire outline and the white undersides of his pectoral flippers as he swam by. The rest of the group surfaced directly at our bow before they all continued their journey to the south.
By the time we got back to sea for our Late Morning Whale Watch Cruise our competitive pod was nowhere to be seen, but we encountered our favorite trio — Mom, her calf, and their escort. This calf was obviously a few weeks old, because she could hold her breath for several minutes during her dives. Several times, all three of them surfaced close to the boat and several times, Mom lifted her flukes before diving (Moms with calves don’t often do those “fluke-up” dives, because that position generally precedes a longer deeper dive, but this calf probably was joining her, at least part of the way down). Mom had some white streaks on her dorsal peduncle (top of the back) — we never got close enough to see if they were scratches or scars, but baby was easily recognizable by her completely black skin.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: In 2004, a company called Whale Power was founded by Dr. Frank Fish, Dr. Phil Watts and Stephen Dewar. The company builds fan blades shaped like a Humpback’s Pectoral Fins with tubercles on the leading edge. The ironically named Dr.Fish was inspired to develop the prototype after looking at a sculpture of a Humpback, and pondering how (or if) the bumps on the front of the whale’s fins would help him move efficiently through the water. He and his partners enlisted the help of the Navy and used their wind tunnel to discover that tubercles break up air (or water flow)…and now with the whale-inspired design, Whale Power’s turbine blades are not only more efficient than smooth blades, but they never stall out violently like smooth blades do, and thus don’t damage the turbine engines. The company’s motto… “A Million Years of Field Tests”. Want to learn more about this technology? Click h