Science In Motion In The Ocean
Science is in motion in the Pacific Ocean!
We’ve encountered a handful of early-season humpback whales on our recent tours, and on December 2nd, Captain Andrew Aggergaard and Naturalist Olivia Miller spotted our first mom, calf, and escort group of the season!
We encountered the trio near Kiholo Bay, and the unmistakable baby dorsal fin had everyone onboard over the moon with excitement! We got some incredible looks as the playful calf surfaced, with mom and companion watching close by. The group cruised south together with baby spending more time at the surface, and the adults took deeper dives and showed their flukes, allowing our crew to capture ID fluke photos!
Every humpback whale has unique markings on the underside of their tail, or flukes, that help to identify them! Using Happywhale’s AI technology and digital photo database, we were able to identify the whales that we were on scene with! Mom has the scientific ID “HW-MN0441379”, and scientific ID “HW-MN0441807” was her male companion.
Watching whales is fun, but it’s also for science! At Hawaiian Adventures, like many other citizen scientists and research organizations, we have been contributing our fluke photos to Happywhale’s database for many years. Identifying whales helps us to better understand their species and populations. By matching our fluke photo to Happywhale’s, we found that the female was also sighted in Hawaii in 2021 with a calf! Seeing this humpback in Hawaiian waters with another new calf is a fantastic sign, and we’re excited to document the continued growth of the humpback population as more return to the Kona Coast!
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