Aloha,
After we left the bay on our Friday Wake Up With the Whales Cruise, we took a hard turn to starboard and headed north. We saw our first spout offshore of the Mauna Lani Resort, so we went over to investigate. This spouter was by herself but travelling south with some pretty long bottom times.
She led us to a pair of Humpbacks who were spending considerable time at the surface, breathing 8 to 10 times before sounding. Interestingly, even after all that thorough reoxygenation, they weren’t staying underwater very long, and we got to see them multiple times. They always surfaced and sounded one after another, and it was fun to see the synchronization. While they were underwater, we deployed our hydrophone and got to listen in on some loud vocalizations from other whales in the area. Finally, just as we passed the mouth of the bay on our way back to our mooring, we found another Humpback duo — again, they weren’t all that active on the surface, but they were definitely in sync with each other.
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: We get asked some great questions during our Whale Watch Cruises and this one came up last week. A guest asked, “Do humpbacks live in family groups”? Here’s what we know. The name for a group of whales is a “pod”. Humpbacks do form pods, but researchers believe that with the exception of cow and calf (who probably stay together for a year or possibly a bit longer), none of these pods is long lasting. In fact, a lot of the surface activities we see might be the result of whales joining together or leaving each other. Pectoral waves and slaps (humpbacks lifting their huge “arms”), tail slaps and slashes, peduncle slashes (humpbacks throwing the whole rear portion of their bodies out of the water) and head lunges all may be forms of communication between humpbacks in a pod. Over the last couple of years, researchers studying individual animals are beginning to think that adult humpbacks form affiliations lasting longer than the time it takes to mate – but they are unwilling to say that this is a true family affiliation.