Aloha,
It was dead calm on the ocean for Saturday’s Wake up with the Whales Cruise. Without the wind whipping up the water and dissapating Humpback spouts, we could see Humpbacks in every direction we looked. The cruise started with a serial breacher who was hanging out just south of the bay — in fact, before we even got to the mouth of the bay in the beginning of our cruise, he had breached twice already. While we watched, he breached another 5 times. After that insanity, we saw spouts from several other pairs and lone whales, but none was on the surface very long. Just north of Kiholo Bay, we found a Mom/calf duo. Mom spent a lot of time resting on the surface, and baby made multiple dives below her, leading us to guess baby was nursing. While we watched this pair, we dropped our hydrophone into the water and heard a lot of different Humpback voices (some were really loud too).
We started off Saturday’s Late Morning Whale Watch Cruise surrounded by a pod of very active Spinner Dolphins. These little cetaceans apparently found our boat wake to be a lot of fun because they spun and jumped all around us. While we were watching them, we scanned for Humpbacks and though we saw lots of spouts, none of these whales were close-by. Towards the end of our cruise we came across three different Mom/Calf/Escort trios. The first pod stayed a good 150 yards from us, but the second and third pods ventured closer to our boat. We got to see one very rambunctious calf who tail lobbed a whole bunch of times. Oh, and just before we got back to the bay at the end of our cruise, we watched a couple of big adult Humpbacks head lunging towards each other, creating some huge splashes.
Guests on our Sunday Wake up with the Whales Cruise spent some time with a lone Humpback. This whale was spending between 15 and 30 minutes underwater between surface events but we got to see him a few times. While we were waiting for him to surface, we deployed the hydrophone and eavesdropped on a lot of Humpback “conversations” going on all around us.
We couldn’t decide if the highlight of our Sunday Late Morning Whale Watch Cruise was watching a Humpback breach from about 100 yards away, or watching Mom Humpback and her calf. These two were accompanied by an Escort and though we saw a lot of baby on the surface, it was the huge spouts from Mom and their Escort that really captured our attention. Again, we were able to deploy the hydrophone, and this time, we actually had to turn the volume down on our speakers so we wouldn’t blow them out, as the singers were so close to the boat.
Mahalo,
Claire
Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: When we say we heard LOUD singing, just how loud do we mean? Well, Humpback whales have been recorded producing sounds at around 185 decibels. Because the decibel scales use different references for sounds underwater than through the air, that’s the equivalent of about 123 decibels for us on the surface…which is as loud as the amplified music at a rock concert when you’re standing directly in front of a tower of speakers.