So much for sticking to writing a few times a week? We'll get better soon. The new year has been busy for us over here on Maui. We're in the process of moving both our office and our home to a new place on Maui. We should be about finished with the move next week, then it will be business as usual.
We won't write much today, but we have had a couple of amazing whale encounters the past two weeks that we had to share with you all!
First was a surface interaction that Dan got some photo's of:
Some splashing in the distance drew our attention to a small group of whales "playing" at the surface. At first it seemed like a normal breaching baby whale, with it's mom and a male escort near by.
The closer we got, we realized that it wasn't a normal encounter at all!
One of the adult whales was actually lifting and throwing the baby out of the water? We had no way of telling if it was the Mother or the Male Escort doing the throwing.
We assumed it was the mohter, and that the behavior was playful in nature.
As far as we could tell, it didn't seem like harmful behavior, and the baby wasn't trying to get away.
We later learned that the behavior could have been brought on by the Male being aggressive enough to literally throw the baby away so that he could have mom to himself and try to mate with her.
We will never know for sure what was really going on, but it sure was interesting to see. We're all glad that Dan had his camera with him so that we could share this with you all.
Unfortunately the Whale Research permits have been on hold this year, so we haven't gotten to get out and swim with the Humpbacks this year. We've heard from a bunch of different people that one of the researchers violated the rules of their permit last whale season by taking paying tourists out to get close encounters with whales. Now, because of this idiot, every other researcher is sidelined until the permit officials decide what to do. As with many decisions these days, many suffer because of one person's stupidity. Can you tell we're bothered by this?
The second encounter was pretty amazing too! We were diving off Lanai and on our way home when we saw a pod of Hawaiian Spinner dolphins playing in their usual spot. We took the boat in to hang out for a while so that everyone could have their dolphin fix for the day. As we approached we noticed that the dolphins weren't alone, there were two Humpbacks swimming and playing along with the dolphins. We stopped the boat and watched for about 20 minutes as the new group of friends swam all around the bay, jumping, splashing and just enjoying each others company.
At about the 20 minute mark, the group took a turn towards the boat. We shut off the engines and waited to see how close they group would come. We knew that the dolphins love to come say hello and even play with the boat for a while, but since the endangered/protected Humpback Whales were with them we were stuck. The rules require that boats and swimmers stay at least 100 yards away from the whales so that they don't get hurt at all, so when whales decide to swim at you and get within 100 yards you just have to wait until they decide to swim 100 yards away again before you can turn your boat on and move. So we waited!
Whale Mugging! from C3 Submerged on Vimeo.
Pretty cool huh? They swam right under the boat! Did you see the dolphins at the beginning of the clip?
After these two encounters we're really hoping that the whale research permits get cleared soon!
Talk soon,
C3
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