Whale Season Off to an Epic Start

We can hardly believe it but Monday marked the beginning of our 44th Whale Watch Season on the Kohala Coast!

On Monday, we operated two Guaranteed Whale Watch Cruises from Anaeho’omalu Bay. Our first Whale Watch of the day (and of the season), our Wake up with the Whales Cruise, can only be described as “epic” (according to our onboard naturalist, Dave).

As we left the bay, Captain Sam spotted 3 spouts about a mile offshore, but before he could head the boat that way, we spotted another spout and then what looked like half of a spout just to our south, so we took a left hand turn to check out these closer whales.

We stopped the boat just south of our Pentagon dive mooring and soon found ourselves with a 45′ Humpback at the surface at our 12:00 and another smaller whale at the surface at our 6:00. After they dove, we deployed our hydrophone and the sounds we heard were really loud and kind of unusual. As we listened, we could make out two distinct voices (one much lower in pitch and louder than the other), and it almost sounded like these two whales were communicating directly with each other.

After listening for awhile,the sound stopped and we saw our closer whale surface just 40 yards off our starboard rail. Her spout not only startled us, but also covered a few of us in a light mist. After exhaling a few times (some of her exhalaltions were quite shallow), she dove, and began singing again. We got to eavesdrop on these two and see them surface periodically for more than 40 minutes before they began to move away from us. That was ok though, as we had to head back to the bay anywa to deboar, and reboard for our next cruise.

By the time we got out of the bay for our Late Morning Whale Watch Cruise, our close-by Humpbacks were gone. We looked to the north, we looked to the west, and we looked to the south, but we didn’t see a single spout. So knowing he had to make some kind of decision, Captain Sam turned to port and headed south towards Kiholo Bay. We didn’t see anything for quite some time but eventually, Captain Sam’s gamble paid off when we encountered a pod of 4 Humpbacks. One of them was considerably bigger than the others but all of them were definitely adults. We watched these 4 rolling around each other at the surface positing that we were seeing our first competitive pod of the season. We didn’t get to see any dramatic surface displays but we could tell they were interacting with each other, and we could tell that a lot of action was going on underwater too (they seemed out of breath when they surfaced — lots of very forceful spouts). Since we were so far from the bay, we watched them for as long as we could before we had to put the boat back into gear to head home. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to witness a resolution of the competition…we caught glimpses of the group astern of the boat but for as long as we could see them, they stayed in that pod of four.

Mahalo,

Claire

Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Humpbacks can be found in all of the oceans of the world — and researchers now recognize 14 distinct populations of Humpback Whales. The whales we see here each winter are part of the North Pacific population. “Our” whales feed in the waters of the Gulf of Alaska during the summer months and swim the approximately 3000 miles to Hawaii each year presumably for social reasons…giving birth to their calves and mating.

This season, we’ll be operating our 8AM and 10:30 Guaranteed Whale Watch Cruises on most Mondays and Thursdays from Anaeho’omalu Bay, and on most Tuesdays and Saturdays from Kawaihae Harbor (on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays we’ll operate our Snorkel & Whale Watch Cruises, and on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, we’ll operate Pau Hana Sunset Whale Watch Cruises) I’ll email and post updates on our Humpback sightings periodically throughout the week. If you aren’t already subscribed to our Whale Reports and would like them delivered to your inbox, please click the link below. If you’d like to join us aboard click here, and if you have burning questions about the Humpbacks I invite you to drop me an email. I’ll do my best to provide your answer in an upcoming Fact of the Day!