Aloha,
We started off our Thursday Whale Watch Cruises with some pretty brisk trade winds. Guests joining us for our Wake Up with the Whales Cruise got to see a lot of different Humpbacks though — lots of spouts in every direction and lots of flukes as these whales sounded. We were surprised twice when Humpbacks we didn’t even know were in the vicinity surfaced right off our stern – one time it was a lone whale and the other time it was a duo. Both times these whales took a look at us and sounded again right away. When we scanned the horizon we got to see some splashes from breaching whales, but the whales were too far away and the wind was blowing too hard for us to cruise out to investigate them.
When we headed out on our Late Morning Whale Watch Cruise it was still pretty windy. Captain Sam took a left hand turn after he got us outside of the bay and we headed south towards some spouts we were seeing. Again we were completely surprised when a couple of whales surfaced just about 20 yards off our stern. Of course we stopped to see what would happen, but the whales dove quickly — which was ok — because the first whales we had been heading towards coalesced into a competitve pod of 5, and they began heading north. We were able to parallel this pod for more than 30 minutes from Keawaiki (about 3/4 south of the bay) all the way to the area offshore of the Hilton Waikoloa Village (1 mile north of the bay). There was quite a bit of surface action as these whales kept ramming into each other and twisting around each other making shallow dives. When we finally got offshore of the Hilton, we realized that what we had been watching was a Mom/calf pair being chased by 3 males Momma veered off from the group directing her baby into some very shallow water (see today’s Fact of the Day for more on this). She was breathing heavily and appeared exhausted. Meanwhile the males were still bashing into each other in a bit deeper water. We finally had to turn back, and after we left, the baby started peduncle throwing and tail lobbing. To top it all off, just before we got back to the bay a pod of Spinner Dolphins found our boat and zipped over to play in our bow and stern wakes.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Dr. Alison Craig and her associates observed that female Humpbacks in Hawaii with calves in tow swim 75% faster when they’re being chased by males in deep water than when they’re being chased in shallow water. As water depth decreased so did the number of males following the mother, making females most likely to be found alone with their calves in the shallows. So why is this observation important? Dr. Craig suggests that it is unwanted male attention which causes the females and calves to increase their swimming speed, in turn requiring the mothers to supply their calves with more milk to compensate for the extra energy they’ve used. Since the females aren’t feeding in Hawaii, the researchers theorize that these female Humpbacks are actually seeking shallow water not to avoid predators… .but to avoid the energetic consequences of male Humpback sexual harassment! It sure looked like that was what happened with our competitive pod today.