Aloha,
Guests joining us for Wednesday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise got to see 6 different Humpbacks. All of them were in pods of two, and all of them were just spouting and then lifting their flukes to dive giving us some great views of those wide tails. Towards the end of the cruise, two Humpbacks decided to cruise down the port side of the boat just about 100 yards away from us, spouting several times before diving (and boy…the sound of a spout that close by is something you really have to experience to appreciate…so forceful). Unlike the last few days, when we deployed the hydrophone during this cruise, we heard a lot of very loud voices.
We departed on our Late-Morning Whale Watch Cruise at 10:30, and this time we saw a couple of spouts to our north so we went over to investigate. Of course by the time we had arrived those two whales had sounded, but after about 20 minutes, we saw a whale further out to see slapping his pec flipper, followed by a sighting of a much smaller whale cruising along the coastline. This smaller whale breached 3 times and suprisingly, we all were looking in the correct direction to catch all the action. And then, believe it or not, it got even more exciting as our whale decided to approach the boat. He swam a complete circle around us staying just about 7 feet away — and then he cut across the bow and spy-hopped (see today’s Fact of the Day for more on that) to take a look at us (we LOVE when that happens). Finally to top off the day, when we got back to the bay we got to see some species of reef shark (we didn’t get close enough to see which species) swimming inside the bay.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Spy hopping is one of the ways a Humpback can see what’s going on above the surface of the water. Because Humpbacks have really big heads proportionally, their eyes are about a third of the way down their bodies. When the whale spy hops, she rises slowly and vertically from the water, head first. If she’s a fully grown whale, the tip of her rostrum may be 15 feet above the surface before her eyes get there!