Big Hearted Humpbacks
March 26, 2024
Aloha,
We started our weekend with some pretty heavy duty winds. So strong in fact, that we weren’t able to deploy our hydrophone for either of our Friday Guaranteed Whale Watch Cruises. Over the course of the morning (2 trips) we saw more than 25 different whales including two different Mom/Baby duos, but the wind wouldn’t allow us to get to most of them. We saw lots of breaches out about a mile or two away (lots of splashes too). Our closest encounter was during our second cruise when we got to see a Mom and calf surface about 50 yards from us, and got to watch the baby breach several times. Unfortunately for us, a pair of adult Humpbacks showed up on the scene causing baby and Mom to dive — and then they all disappeared on us.
By Monday morning, it seemed like a lot of the Humpbacks had begun their migration back to Alaska. On our Wake up with the Whales Cruise from Anaeho’omalu Bay, Captain Sam took a right hand turn out of the Bay and got almost all the way to Puako before turning back. Towards the end of the cruise we encountered a Mom and her calf (no escort). Baby was on the surface quite a bit and we even got some good views of Mom’s flukes as she lifted them before diving.
Our Late Morning Whale Watch was also pretty quiet. We found a lone Humpback towards the beginning of the cruise and tried to keep up with him, but it was difficult. This whale was spending a lot of time underwater and wasn’t surfacing in a predictable pattern (at least it wasn’t predictable to any of us). Later in the cruise we found another lone adult Humpback. Our second whale was pretty far from shore, but towards the end of our trip he surfaced a couple of times about 100 yards away from us, giving all of us a good view of his spout, his dorsal fin, his peduncle and his flukes.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: A Humpback Whale has a big heart. An 80,000 pound whale’s heart averages just over 400 pounds, and according to measurements made by the Nelson Institute of Marine Research, beats an average of somewhere between 10 and 30 times per minute.