Night and Day

Aloha,

We operated back to back Whale Watch Cruises from Anaeho’omalu Bay on Thursday and they were like night and day.

We spent a lot of time driving around during our Wake up with the Whales Cruise, resulting in just one brief sighting of a Humpback’s flukes from about 600 yards. When we deployed the hydrophone during this cruise, we heard some very loud and clear sounds, so though we weren’t seeing much, we definitely knew there were whales around. Of course that wasn’t good enough for us, so we called the trip a “Fluke” and invited everyone to join us again on another Whale Watch Cruise for Free!

After we returned to the bay and deboarded, we reboarded for our Late Morning Whale Watch. Based on our first cruise, we didn’t have high hopes for this second trip, but it was like night and day. After departing the bay, we headed straight to the west and saw 3 Humpbacks that were about 600 yards away from each other. While we watched, one of them was rolling around a bit at the surface before sounding. Then, the second whale surprised us with a complete breach. After that the three of them joined each other. One of these three was markedly smaller than the other two, but that didn’t stop him from interacting with the big guys. Once the pod formed they spend a lot of time at the surface with minimal time underwater, so we got to see lots of spouts and lots of flukes. At the hour and 15 minute mark, it was like they knew our cruise time was coming to a close, because all three of them sounded and we never saw them again. There was so much action at the surface during this cruise that we never even got a chance to deploy the hydrophone!

Mahalo,

Claire

Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: We used to think that the whales that arrived on the coast of the Big Island spent their Hawaii-time here with us. Research and close observation of individuals has proved us wrong. While the Humpbacks seem to prefer to spend most of their time on the lee sides of islands and in water less than 600 feet deep, they will travel between the islands (not in any particular direction that we’re aware of)….females who have calves travel less frequently though.