Constant Companion
Aloha,
‘Twas the day before Christmas, and the whales in the ocean, were up at the surface creating commotion…
Ok, enough of that. But we did have some great Humpback sightings during our Tuesday Whale Watch Cruises.
As we were leaving the harbor for our Wake Up with the Whales Cruise we spotted 2 juvenile Humpbacks just about a mile away from us, so we made our way over to them. We watched them slapping their huge pectoral flippers on the surface several times before they decided to dive (for more on this, see today’s Fact of the Day). These two stayed on a 12 minute dive cycle for quite awhile so we got to see them pretty regularly, and when they did decide to surface, they hung out on top for quite awhile too. We were also able to deploy our hydrophone during this trip and eavesdropped on quite a few Humpback conversations.
We couldn’t even get out of the Harbor at the beginning of our Late-Morning Whale Watch Cruise because a sub-adult Humpback decided to cross our bow right at the navigation buoys! Of course Captain Sam was travelling slowly anyway, and of course he put Alala in neutral when this surprise occurred. Everyone on the boat got to see our visitor and a lot of us got to smell him too! For the rest of the trip, this whale was our constant companion. He wasn’t spending much time at all below the surface, and most of the time while he was on the surface he appeared to be just resting and breathing and never attempting to swim very far. We stopped the boat multiple times to deploy our hydrophone, and while the sounds we heard weren’t extremely loud, they were extremely clear. Towards the end of the cruise we saw a Humpback about 600 yards away from us do a complete peduncle throw — that’s what we call it when a whale lifts the entire lower half of his body out of the water and slams it back on the surface — it certainly looks like an aggressive display, but since we didn’t see any other whales close by, maybe this time it was just an exuberant display.
Mahalo,
Claire
Click to play our Mele Kalikimaka Greetings!
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Why do we love to see a Humpback wave his pectoral flipper in the air before slapping it on the surface of the water? Well, that pectoral flipper is one of the most distinguishing morphological (body) characteristics of the genus. Humpbacks have extremely long pectoral flippers averaging 1/3rd the length of their bodies (approx. 15 feet). The flipper is such a distinguishing feature that the genus name for the Humpback (Megaptera) actually describes it – the translation from Latin for Megaptera is “Big – Winged”.