Hauntingly Beautiful

Aloha,

We went out on two Whale Watch Cruises from Kawaihae on Saturday. During our 8AM Wake up with the Whales Cruise we saw spouts from about 6 or 8 different whales, but it took us almost 40 minutes to find that first pair. These two dove when we were about 200 yards from them and then we never saw them again. Those of us watching the horizon saw some spouts out there, but those whales were too far away for us to investigate. Coming back into the harbor, we saw a pod of two — but again, they disappeared from sight when we were just over 200 yards away. So though we saw Humpbacks, it wasn’t good enough for us. We called the trip a “Fluke” and invited everyone onboard to join us again on another Whale Watch Cruise for FREE.

Guests who joined us on our 10:30 Late Morning Whale Watch Cruise got to meet a Mom/Calf pair. Baby was burning off some energy at the surface — we got to watch him slap his little pec flippers and zip around all over the place. While we were watching him, 2 other big Humpbacks approached, but either they didn’t like what they were seeing, or Mom expressed her disinterest underwater, because after a brief glimpse, these two continued on their journey up the coastline.

Meanwhile, we also took a group of folks out on a Private Snorkel Sail on Seasmoke from Anaeho’omalu Bay. Of course we stopped to watch the whales during the cruise. At one point, Captain Jason turned the boat engines off and we could clearly hear a Humpback singing — we didn’t even need to deploy our hydrophone! We all looked overboard but none of us could see our singer, though he had to be directly below us.

Mahalo,

Claire

Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day:  As proven on Saturday’s Seasmoke cruise, we don’t always need to deploy our hydrophone to hear the whales singing. When singing whales are very close to the boat, their songs reverberate through the hulls. Is this experience responsible for the origin of the Greek myth of the sirens? In Greek mythology, sirens were the beautiful creatures who, with their enchanting music, lured sailors to crash on their islands. Now imagine you were a sailor in, say, 2000 BC listening to these haunting sounds in your berth in the hold of your ship…who (or what) would you think was responsible for their creation?