Nice day in the water today on Maui.
I took my buddy Ice on a whale watching trip with the Pacific Whale Foundation. As I have mentioned before, out of the whole whale season (roughly November to April), the best time to see whales is full moon February to full moon March. That is according to one of the naturalists on a boat a couple of years ago. Well, here we are in late February and the whales were hopping and breaching today!
We started off with a little greeting by a couple of dolphins. They swam past the ship soon after we left the harbor. I’m not used to seeing the dolphins, but I managed to get off a good shot as they swam under the boat and appeared right beside us.
Then, on to the whales. We saw several whales “logging.” This is when they are just kind of floating horizontal on the top of the water. Just hanging out. We saw some blow from a mom and calf. We saw some whales from far away.
My buddy made some comments like: “Well, at least the boat trip is nice,” and “We saw more whales from the beach.” But, true to form – the whale watch provided plenty of breaching whale shots. In fact, one whale breached several times right off the side of the boat and it was the closest I have ever seen a whale breach.
Ta da!
and……….
and……..
Finally, as we made our way back to the harbor, the captain suddenly slowed the boat. For……no….not another whale. A little Honu was about to cross our path! I barely got him with his little head sticking out of the water. You can see him at the bottom of the picture.
All in all, a good whale watching day. Aloha!
I’ll leave you with some more visuals from today.
And, one more video to completely bore you. Same whale breaches twice!
What a great boat trip. Sea mammals are special.
Looks like you had a whale of a time there! 😀