Are You Patient Enough?

Aloha,

No one is sure if it was Cato the Elder or Chaucer who first wrote that patience is a virtue, but if you’re an avid whale watcher you know this to be true. Tuesday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise was a case in point. We spent the beginning of the cruise seeing spouts from various Humpbacks all about 200 yards away from us. After seeing quite a few of these far-away whales there was a 30 minute lull before we were completely surprised by a lone Humpback who surfaced only 30 feet from us, followed by a pair of Humpbacks who surfaced about 60 feet away…and then there was nothing again. So after waiting around for awhile, Captain Will headed further out to sea — which turned out to be a great decision as after all that waiting around seeing nothing, we all got to see an adult Humpback breach six times and pec slap 15 times just over 100 yards away from us.

Guests on our Late-Morning Whale Watch Cruise from Kawaihae spent a good amount of time with Mom Humpback and her little calf. The first time we saw them, they were probably 200 yards away, but we stopped to watch them, and again we were patient. Our patience paid off because these two approached us, diving and surfacing three times while we were in idle. Each time they surfaced they were a little closer to us until finally they surfaced just about 60 yards away. The baby was…well…a baby and we got to see him slap his little flukes on the surface of the water (which, when an adult does it, seems quite aggressive, but when a baby does it, it’s just cute). These two weren’t the only whales we saw during the cruise — we saw lots of breaching from other whales further away — but these two were the most fun to watch for sure.

Mahalo,

Claire

Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: When we see a Humpback wave his pectoral flipper, it looks really floppy — as if there were no bones inside it at all. But if you were to x-ray that flipper, surprisingly, you’d find all the same bones and joints that we have in our arms — all the way down to the smallest digits of our fingers. According to researcher Spencer Wilkie Tinker, Humpbacks are missing what would be the third finger on a human.