Aloha,
We spent all of Tuesday morning with a competitive pod of Humpbacks. Our first sightings during our Wake Up with the Whales Cruise were of a pod of two whales. These two were kind of dancing around each other, twisting their huge bodies as they dove under the surface. While we were watching them, a third whale joined in…and then it started getting really interesting. These three were definitely interacting on the surface — we saw some head lunges and lots more twisting dives. When we deployed the hydrophone, we got to listen in to lots of Humpback voices, but none of the vocalizers where particularly close.
We encountered the same competitive pod during our Late Morning Whale Watch Cruise. At first we weren’t sure if this was the same group we had been looking at during our first cruise since they were much closer to the bay than when we had left them, but once we got a good glimpse of one whale who had a distinctive white spot on his pectoral flipper we knew we were right. This was the same pod…but in our absence, it had grown to 6 whales. Of course we’re not sure if it was the population density that prompted their behaviors, but during this cruise, the pod was much more violent. We saw a lot of huge pectoral slaps and tail lobs from various individuals in the pod, and even a couple of breaches. The pod was moving pretty quickly towards the south, so we abandoned our efforts with stopping to deploy the hydrophone, and did our best to parallel them for as long as we could. Eventually, we had to turn away from them to get back to the bay, so we didn’t get the opportunity to see the resolution of the competition.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Why do we love to see a Humpback wave his pectoral flipper in the air before slapping it on the surface of the water? Well, that pectoral flipper is one of the most distinguishing morphological (body) characteristics of the genus. Humpbacks have extremely long pectoral flippers averaging 1/3rd the length of their bodies (approx. 15 feet). The flipper is such a distinguishing feature that the genus name for the Humpback (Megaptera) actually describes it – the translation from Latin for Megaptera is “Big – Winged”.