It Happened Twice

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 happen. Instead we got to watch the Escort body-check baby and Mom, preventing them from approaching We were excited to invite a boat load of Waikoloa Cub Scouts on to our second trip of the day — our Late Morning Whale Watch Cruise. This trip was pretty similar to our first trip – lots of whales everywhere. And just like during the first cruise, a baby Humpback attempted to approach us but at the last moment was body checked by Mom and the Escort. A couple of different times we were approached by curious adult Humpbacks and we all got to see a pod of two swim right down our starboard rail about 6 feet below the surface. When we deployed our hydrophone we heard some very loud singing…and Captain Will even saw on our fish finder that a Humpback was floating about 50 feet below our idling boat. any closer than about 30 yards. We also had a few other close encounters from Humpbacks surfacing just about 30 feet from our idling boat.

Mahalo,

Claire

Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: The gestation period for a Humpback whale is about 11 months, which means the calves we’re seeing this year were conceived last winter. We can only estimate gestation because oddly, researchers have never observed the same female mating and then giving birth. And actually, until February 16th, 2023, no one had ever successfully filmed a Humpback birth (though 5 years ago University of Hawaii researchers got their drone in place to witness a baby just a few moments out of Mom’s birth canal). Just about two years ago some extremely lucky divers off the coast of Amami-Oshima Island, in Kagoshima Prefecture Japan, not only witnessed part of the birthing process but actually filmed it. Click here to read about their adventure and see the video.