Aloha,
We operated a whole bunch of Whale Watches over the weekend — too many to provide details, but here are a few highlights.
On both of Friday’s Whale Watch Cruises we spent time with a Mom/Calf/Escort trio (the same trio that had been hanging around offshore of the Hilton Waikoloa Village Resort on Thursday). Baby was interested in the boat, and Mom used her big body to block his approach several times. We saw some breaches from other whales, but all of them were too far away for us to investigate.
The highlight of our Saturday Cruises was watching a pair of adult Humpbacks interacting with each other at the surface. We saw lots of twisting shallow dives from the two of them as they appeared to rub up against each other just below and just above the surface. Some of our guests and crew seemed to think we were watching mating, or pre-mating behaviors, but we were never in the right place to determine whether that’s what was really going on.
Sunday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise began with sightings of several breaches well south of the bay, followed by breaches by a Mom and calf just outside of the bay. Captain Sam tried his best to get us outside of the mouth of the bay to see that Mom and calf, but they stopped breaching before he could manuever past all the shallow coral. Later in the cruise we saw a group of 5 Humpbacks interacting, including two adults who were head lunging and pec slapping offshore of the Fairmont Orchid and just about 50 yards from our idling boat. As incredible as that was to see, we all had to agree that the best moment of this cruise was almost at the end of the trip when a lone Humpback breached just 50 yards off our bow.
Guests joining us on Sunday’s Late Morning Whale Watch spent some time with that group of 5 from our earlier trip, but then Captain Sam spotted a different group of 3 Humpbacks, so he headed over to check them out. These three approached our idling boat, spouting right at our bow several times. After they finally left us, we headed back to our group of 5 and actually watched one of them pec slap another one in the pod, who reacted with a huge peduncle throw aimed at his assualter.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: We’ve never witnessed a Humpback taking care of two calves. We know she could conceive twins (and whalers occasionally would find twin fetuses) but we doubt she could carry twins to term. And even if she could, we really doubt she could produce the 200 gallons of milk she’d need each day to feed two calves!