Whales off the coast of Maui

God's creatures always amaze me.  We have been whale watching 3 times in Hawaii.  The first time we had them on both sides of our boat for most of the cruise.  We saw their backs and their tails and they were close, but we did not see one breach.  Sort of a disappointment as they were so close.  The next night we went out on a catamaran for a barefoot cruise.  Off in the distance there were whales breaching.  I took some pictures, but it was getting dark and the whales were quite a distance away. This past January we rented a condo for a few days at a resort in Maui.  The first thing we did was go on a whale watching cruise.  It is a good thing we did, because before we got back to our condo it had started raining and it rained for 2 days straight, closing roads, and causing a lot of cancelations of activities.  But this cruise had to be one of the best of the year for the crew.  We had whales breaching right beside our boat.

I had my long lens on and it was too much.  I could not get the whole whale in the frame.  There were several male whales and one female.  Of course the males were fighting each other.  Here is a picture of two of them.  If you look closely, you can see bloody spots on one of them.

There are regulations as to how close you can get to whales.  But if they come to you, one just turns off the engines to the boat and sits there until they leave.  This is what we did for quite sometime.  The crew of the boat believes that the female was under our boat.  The males were all around us.  The spray from the whales landed on us.  It was so much fun to be so close to these marvelous creatures.

This has had to be one of the best experiences that I have ever had. 

We went whale watching again in Maui because our other activity that day was called off, and we saw a baby whale breach.

There were lots of whales that day too, but not the amount or the closeness to us that the other trip had.  On Oahu we saw several breach also.  It was truly a good January for humpback whales in Hawaii.  I will go whale watching again if I get the chance.  We are heading out to the northwest this fall.  Perhaps we will see whales there.