Aloha,
Guests on Monday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise had lots of choices to make. We saw Humpbacks pretty much every where we looked, but ended up focusing on a couple of different Mom/baby duos. The other unrelated Humpbacks in the area shared our focus and we got to see lots of interactions between the single adult (male) whales and the Moms. We also watched some light competitive action between all of the wanna’ be Escorts, and had some very close encounters with a few of the smaller whales as they got driven off the competitive pods by the larger and more experienced males. When we had the opportunity to deploy the hydrophone, we heard what Captain Will described as “unreal sounds” (his way to say “lots and lots of loud and different voices from lots and lots of close-by whales”).
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: This just in! Recent research drawing from 20 years of observations of South Pacific Humpbacks shows that as the Humpback population continues to rebound from the low population density following the active hunting of the whales, it’s more and more common for older male Humpbacks to successfully mate and father calves than for their younger counterparts. The researchers suggest that male Humpback whales may need time to learn and refine their singing and competitive tactics, and now that the population is skewing more towards older animals, the experienced males have a clear advantage in the mating game.. You can read more about this research here