Humpback Whales

  Aloha, Based on the weather forecast posted on Wednesday, we weren’t sure what we were going to see when we woke up on Thursday morning, but the strong winds and rain that were supposed to be hitting us hadn’t filled in yet, so we boarded our guests and headed out to sea for our…

Aloha, Tuesday morning’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise from Kawaihae started out pretty quiet. Sure, we saw a lot of spouts from a lot of different Humpbacks, but none of them was doing much on the surface besides spouting and diving. We got a couple of close looks at a Mom/Calf duo who surfaced…

Aloha, As we boarded our guests for our Monday Wake up with the Whales Cruise, we could see a storm with lightening off to the northwest…near Maui. Luckily the lightening didn’t come our way, or we would have had to cancel the trip out of an abundance of caution. We headed south (away from any…

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…

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…

Aloha, We spend the first 70 minutes of our Tuesday 90 minute Wake up with the Whales Cruise watching multiple pods of two and three Humpbacks spouting pretty much everywhere we looked. We couldn’t approach any of these whales even to the 100 yard mark because each of the pods was being watched by other…

Aloha, We were surrounded by spouting whales during our Monday morning Wake up with the Whales Cruise. Throughout the course of the cruise we must have seen at least 2 dozen different Humpbacks, including two different Mom/Calf/Escort pods. The calf from one of these pods clearly wanted to check us out, but sadly it didn’t…

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…

Aloha, Watch what happened to us during our Wake up with the Whales Cruise on Saturday! Mahalo, Claire Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Was the whale who came to visit us on Saturday really looking at us? We think so. Though Humpbacks rely on their sense of hearing far more than any other sense, we do know that vision is also important to them. Based on the shape of the Humpbacks’ corneas, they can certainly see us…but, they’re probably a bit farsighted when looking through water and a bit nearsighted when looking through the air. And in case anyone asks you, Humpbacks have beautiful brown eyes. Their eyeballs weigh, on average, 2.16 pounds. Human eyeballs weigh about a quarter of an ounce.

Aloha, Everyone aboard Thursday’s Wake Up with the Whales Cruise got to see a Humpback on the surface at least 20 different times. We were watching 7 different Humpbacks all within 50 to 250 yards of us who were all on 10 minute dive cycles. Since they hadn’t synchronized those dives, it seemed like there…