Aloha,
Our one and only dedicated Whale Watch Cruise on Monday was our Wake up with the Whales Cruise, and it was a fun one.
We started the cruise with a couple of views of a lone Humpback who was just south of the bay. He was on a 13 minute dive cycle, so we took advantage of the times he was gone from sight to scan the horizon looking for who else might be in our neighborhood. After our loner sounded the second time, we headed a bit further south towards some breaching whales. Of course they stopped breaching before we could get to them, but on the way, we found a Mom/Calf/Escort pod. We only got to see the Escort one time, so we figured he took off in search of greener pastures (a.k.a. a more receptive female Humpback). Meanwhile, the baby started acting like, well, a baby. We watched him breach at least a dozen times about 100 yards from us.
When we deployed the hydrophone during this cruise we heard some give and take between Mom and Baby (low pitched voices followed by high pitched voices followed by low pitched voices etc.). We also got to listen to the “Wuup Wuup Wuup” sounds made by a few adult Humpbacks who were further away.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Humpback whales –even the calves– can’t cry They don’t have tear ducts (they don’t need them — their eyes are always bathed in salt water) but they do have glands on their outer corneas which secrete an oily substance that helps to protect their eyes from debris in the ocean.