Mixed Bag on Tuesday
Aloha,
We operated our Guaranteed Whale Watch Cruises on Tuesday from Kawaihae Harbor.
Guests on our Wake up with the Whales Cruise spent some quality time with 2 different Humpbacks and got a few glimpses of a third whale who was too far away for us to really get to know. Our first sighting was of a full grown Humpback just outside of the harbor. This whale surfaced 3 different times about 100 yards away from us. He (or she) was just kind of cruising along, spouting a few times before sounding. Our second Humpback was quite a bit smaller, and was hanging out close to shore underneath Kohala By the Sea. Again, this whale was in cruising mode — just spouting and sounding. We saw him several times as we were able to parallel his travel along the coastline. When we deployed the hydrophone we heard some Humpback voices, but they were pretty faint.
We weren’t as successful on our Late-Morning Whale Watch Cruise as we were on our first cruise. We decided to head south from the harbor and after searching awhile and seeing nothing, turned the boat and headed back north. When we got closer to the coastline, we stopped the boat to deploy the hydrophone. While we were listening to the Humpbacks vocalizing, we spotted a large spout a couple miles up the coastline, but unfortunately, that whale was too far away for us to reach. Luckily, we saw a spout from a smaller whale a bit closer to us — and we got to see this whale from about 100 yards before he sounded. We waited and waited and waited for our smaller whale to return to the surface — it took 26 minutes (we timed his dive), but after surfacing briefly, he sounded again. So though we saw a few Humpbacks and heard a few more, it wasn’t good enough for us. We called this trip a Fluke and invited all of our guests to join us again on another one of our Guaranteed Whale Watch Cruises for FREE!
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: You may have heard that Humpback Whales are no longer on the Endangered Species List…but don’t worry, they’re still protected. In autumn 2016, after researchers were able to determine that the global population of Humpbacks is actually14 distinct populations, NOAA removed “our” Humpbacks (and 8 other populations) from the list. In the United States, the protection Humpbacks receive under the Marine Mammal Protection Act has not changed. I’ll provide more info about this protection in a future post.