Well, That Was Different
Aloha,
It seems like I’ve been writing this phrase a lot lately…”The surf was up again” but…the surf was up again for Tuesday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise from Kawaihae Harbor. That meant that the conditions at the dock were surgy, but once we got out of the harbor and into deeper water, all we could feel were slow, rolling waves.
Guests joining on this trip got to see 5 different Humpbacks. The first of these was a lone whale, spouting in the distance, but before we could get out to investigate, we came across a pair of Humpbacks. These two seemed (and “seemed” is the operative word here) to be cruising together amicably. In fact we watched them surface, spout and dive together a few times before one of the two expressed her (his?) excitement, aggression or irritation by performing 3 peduncle throws aimed at the other whale. These huge displays completely surprised us as we didn’t see any precipitating interactions and we were only about 100 yards from the pod at the time (of course we have no idea what the whale on the receiving end thought of what was suddenly happening). Unfortunately, we had to head back to the harbor before they surfaced again so we don’t know if the peduncle throws caused the dissolution of the pod. On the way back to the harbor we saw another pair of Humpbacks spout before sounding. We weren’t able to deploy our hydrophone during the cruise because 3 other boats headed over to watch “our” whales and all our microphone would have been able to pick up would be the sound of boat engines.
The first 60 minutes of our Late Morning Whale Watch Cruise were completely different from the last 30 minutes. We started the trip with sightings of two separate pairs of whales about a mile outside of the harbor. They weren’t really doing very much but we got to see each of the pairs on the surface 5 different times. But towards the end of the cruise…oh my gosh…we spotted a juvenile whale breaching from about a quarter of a mile away. Of course Captain Jason took us over to investigate, and while we watched, that whale must have breached 35 times. We stopped the boat about a 100 yards away, but with every breach, that whale kept getting closer and closer until eventually he breached just about 100 feet from us.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Just how difficult is it for a 40 ton, 45 foot long animal to “fly” from the sea in a total breach? Observers have reported seeing Humpbacks breach after only two kick strokes for propulsion. Based on the formula for calculating horsepower, measurements of laminar flow around cetacean skin (how water flows past the skin of the animal), girth and drag in the water, the breaching whale is producing between 1500 and 1700 horsepower in order to “catch air”. We used to think it was closer to 5000 horsepower, but with the aid of a calculator and more accurate measurements, we’ve been able to recalculate …still, try this yourself next time you’re in the water. We’re betting you won’t get very far…and now try to do it 35 times in a row! Whoo!