Bringing Tears to our Eyes
Aloha,
There’s lots to report from our last few days of Whale Watching, so here are just a few of the highlights.
Guests on Saturday’s Late Morning Whale Watch Cruise saw a half dozen different whales, but we spent most of our time with a very active Mom/Calf pod. We saw at least 10 full breaches from these two whales (was Mom demonstrating the behavior for her baby or was baby’s excitement contagious enough to spur mom on?). At one point they were breaching just 50 yards from our idling boat.
On Monday’s Wake Up with the Whales Cruise we had to travel a few miles out to sea in order to find any whales. But once we got offshore, we found three different Mom/Calf pairs. One of these calves was burning off his milk — we must have seen 5 different breaches from him (including the one you see in the gif above). Later in the cruise we encountered a very active competitive pod of 4 or maybe 5 big whales (there was too much going on with them to count). We saw lots of lunging from them and lots of shoving at the surface. When they dove, it wasn’t for long and they didn’t go deep — in fact we could see the outlines of their bodies right below the surface on several occasions.
Monday’s second cruise of the day, our Late Morning Whale Watch Cruise was so exciting it made some of us want to cry. Early in the cruise we found a Mom/Calf/Escort pod, and that little calf was incredibly fun to watch. Over the course of the cruise, we must have seen him breach at least 2 dozen times, and that’s not counting all of the head lunges he was doing. He was out of the water more than he was in it…and his antics must have either excited or irritated the escort because we got to see him breach too.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Though we can cry, Humpback whales can’t — 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.