Day 9: Whale Watching

A beautiful morning with bright blue skies and sunshine. Molokai has consistently been topped by clouds and today was no different. But Maui, except for Haleakala crater, was clear all day. Don't forget your sunscreen. It does not take much to get a burn. we were a little pink from yesterday even sitting under a tree just for lunch.

View from our lanai.

As we were leaving today, right outside our door, we found a banana tree. They aren't quite ready yet.

We drove down to the pier to catch our pontoon raft for whale watching. You know what that means...another early morning. We had barely cleared the dock and put on some speed when we came upon a hump backed whale mother and calf. According to the boat captain the calf was so young that mom was bringing the calf up to the surface for each breath. There was also another whale that brought it's nose and eye above the water surface. The mate called it eye spying, basically just looking around. She further explained that sometimes whales that eye spy will come very close to nearby boats. I thought it was called periscoping but I'm not sure about it. We waited in vain for any of them to come closer and finally moved on.

Breech splash very close to another boat.

We all know that whales are identified by their flukes but it based on the underside pattern.

We saw a lot of top side flukes.

Maui craters.

A couple of double rolls.

While we were waiting for some observable whale activity, the Captain put a hydrophone into the water so we could hear this season's whale song. The males hang upside down, stationary, and sing, first one and then each was taking a turn. The females do not partake in this activity. It was a calming yet eerie noise.

Captain Steve on board, crew mate on the pier. I don't remember her name but she is a member of the Entanglement Responder Team for marine life in danger due to netting, fishing lines and other trash.

Local temple - Lahaina Jodo Mission

Buddha and bell at mission

Finally, a picture of a whale breaching.
This was while we were relaxing on our lanai.

This is a sea turtle right off the shore from our lanai. There are about 4 or 5 turtles that seem to always hang out in this area. The condo has a couple of photos of turtles sunning on the rocks.

Turtle hanging ten, if he had any. 

Okay, Bob, focus on the whales.

Once we got back to our condo, we spent most the day just watching the several pods off shore. One little whale was having quite a fun time having learned to breech. Once I started looking in "his" direction there were 9 straight breeches. A larger whale very close then gave us 5 pectoral slaps.

The activity continued almost non-stop all afternoon. Even had several tail slaps which seem to be rather rare.

Seriously, the whales or turtles, dude.

Taking a long look around. So cute.

From what we can see all those rocks are lava rocks.

Sometimes the waves come crashing in...

and spectacularly spray up over the rocks.

I just liked how the sunlight was hitting the fronds. It looked prettier in person.

We threw together a quick dinner to eat on the lanai before sunset.

Oh, yes! So much better than a cold, windy, way to early sunrise.
A great way to end the day.