Lazy and Loud

Aloha,

According to Captain Will, our final Whale Watch of 2024 can be described with just 2 words…Loud and Lazy.

Guests joining us on this Wake up with the Whales Cruise from Kawaihae Harbor got to see spouts from 8 or so different Humpbacks. We spent most of our time with 2 pods of two sub-adult Humpbacks (i.e. none of the 4 were huge whales). Both of these pods were just meandering along the surface, spouting and then slipping back under the water without even showing their flukes. They were all on 20 minute dive cycles, but since the pods weren’t synchronizing those dives, we had a lot of opportunities to watch whales breathing and floating. The closest any of the whales ever surfaced was just about 50 yards off the bow of our idling boat.

So that’s why Captain Will thought the whales were lazy…but why did he say they were loud? Well, when we deployed the hydrophone, we actually had to turn the volume down. The whales we were watching weren’t the singers (we know that because the singing continued at the same volume and with the same number of voices even while our whales were on the surface), but based on the sounds coming through our speakers, there definitely were some other Humpbacks underwater very close by who we never got a chance to see.

Mahalo and Hau’oli Makahiki Hou!

Claire

Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: When we say we heard LOUD singing, just how loud do we mean? Well, Humpback whales have been recorded producing sounds at around 185 decibels. Because the decibel scales use different references for sounds traveling through water than sounds traveling through air, that’s the equivalent of about 123 decibels for us on the surface…which is as loud as the amplified music at a rock concert when you’re standing directly in front of a tower of speakers.