Battle Royale

Aloha,

Whoo-boy, we witnessed a battle royale during Friday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise departing from Anaeho’omalu Bay. As we were leaving the bay, we saw spouts everywhere — there sure are a lot of Humpbacks hanging out on the Kohala Coast these days! Captain Maika chose to turn to port (that’s a “left-hand turn” for all you landlubbers out there) as we left the bay and we got to spend some quality time with a very active competitive pod of 5 or possibly 6 whales. These Humpbacks were shoving each other around on the surface for quite awhile. We saw lots of head lunges, lots of Humpbacks slapping various parts of their bodies on the surface creating huge splashes, and even some body-checks as they slammed into each other. Of course all that activity requires some heavy-duty reoxygenation, so the spouts we heard (both exhalations AND inhalations) were really loud and trumpet-y. When we could tear our eyes away from this craziness, we got to see other Humpbacks breaching about 500 yards away.

On our second cruise of the day, our Late Morning Whale Watch Cruise, we filled the boat with keiki and their parents from Volcano School. This time, we got to watch two different competitive pods of very aggressive Humpbacks. Just like on our first cruise, we saw lots of head lunges, and lots of surface interaction within the pods. Each of these pods passed close by us (we figured they knew we were there, but they were so busy with each other that they didn’t really care). In fact one of the pods swam right under the boat before surfacing near by and continuing the fight. When we deployed our hydrophone we got to listen in on some very loud and very clear Humpback voices.

Mahalo,

Claire

Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Though measuring the length and weight of a Humpback’s internal organs is not really an exact science, it’s been estimated that the intestines of a fully grown Humpback whale are about 200 feet long (approximately 5 times the length of her body).