Skip to primary navigation Skip to content Skip to footer
Back to Blog

Are They Interested or Just Interesting?

Humpback swims under the boat

Aloha,

Guests on our Thursday Wake up with the Whales Cruise from Anaeho’omalu Bay were greeted by a curious sub-adult Humpback. This 30 footer swam right up to our port bow and then down the rail, just about 6 feet below the surface, clearly checking us out. Later in the cruise we were almost T-boned by two big whales who swam on the surface to the side of the boat, sounding just before they got to us. They must have dived deep because we never saw them again. In between all these close encounters we saw Humpbacks on the surface in every direction — too many to count (although our naturalist Dave swears there must have been at least 30 different whales within sight). We saw lots of spouts and dorsal fins and lots of flukes too from diving whales.

We headed north from the bay for our 10:30 Late Morning Whale Watch Cruise. Again, there were Humpbacks in every direction we looked (and a lot OF them). We chose to spend most of our time with a competitive pod of 4 whales. One of them was laying on her back on the surface — at least we’re guessing this supine whale was a female, most likely positioning herself to prevent “access” from the males. We saw lots of pec slapping and lots of rolling around from all of these whales. We even got to see a 5th Humpback approach the group from behind the boat, but unfortunately we had to leave to get back to the bay, so we didn’t get to find out if his presence had any effect on the competition.

Mahalo,

Claire

Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Are the Humpbacks we watch so closely each winter watching us too? Researchers have discovered that the brains of many cetaceans, including Humpbacks, contain 3 times as many spindle neurons as are found in humans. What do these neurons do? In humans spindle neurons have been observed to be active when the subject is experiencing strong emotions and social awareness…so it’s quite possible that the whales who approach our boats are doing so with intent. Maybe just as we spend our days trying to interpret the reasons behind the whales’ behaviors, the Humpbacks are spending their days trying to figure out why we’re so interested in them!