Aloha,
We operated two dedicated Whale Watch Cruises on Thursday, and guests on each got to see a wide variety of Humpback behaviors from a wide variety of Humpbacks.
The highlight of our Wake Up with the Whales Cruise was getting to spend a lot of time with a Mom/Calf/Escort pod. Baby wasn’t a newborn, so he was spending considerable time underwater with the adults. At one point, the baby tried to approach the boat, but Mom and the Escort weren’t having it — they blocked his approach with their big bodies. Later in the cruise we watched two adult Humpbacks swim slowly and deliberately towards our bow. When they got about 60 feet away (close enough that we could see that turquoise glow from the sun reflecting off the white parts of their bodies), they surfaced and then took off, picking up speed as they headed away from us — they looked like they were on a mission, but if that was the case, we had no idea what the mission was. We also saw lots of breaches from whales we wish had been closer to us.
On our Late-Morning Whale Watch Cruise we found the same Mom/Calf/Escort pod that we were watching during our first trip. This time baby was acting up — or acting out — or maybe just playing around, buring off energy after nursing. We watched him breach and “sort-of” breach over and over and over again. At one point he was launching himself out of the water just about 20 feet off our bow. When we could tear our eyes away from him, we saw multiple spouts and maybe some half-hearted competition from different pods of adult whales that were further out to sea.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Being mammals, Humpback Moms feed their calves milk. But Humpback milk isn’t just any old milk — it’s extremely rich with a fat content of approximately 50% so it doesn’t dissipate quickly in salt water. As a comparison, human milk contains only about 4.5% fat. Supposedly, Humpback milk tastes like “sweetened cod liver oil” …but I’m going to have to rely on what I read to verify that description!