Whale Watching!

This Wednesday we went whale watching with Matthew's mom, aunt, and grandfather. It was such a great trip. The whole entire time it was "Oh! Look over there!" "Did you see that over there?!" "WOW!"

Group picture before we boarded.

The boat we were on.

First wild animal sighting. A sign that it was going to be a great trip.

Janet and her dad, Reg.

Barely out of the harbor and we have our first whale sighting. This was a momma whale, baby whale and their primary escort, AKA hoping to be mom's boyfriend or dad of next years calf. Though you can only really see the momma whale in the picture.

Diving deep.

Reg is enjoying himself looking for the whales.

We think this is the same group whales that we first saw. In the picture is the baby whale. He got so close to us that they had to turn the boat off. Whales are very protected in the waters here. Boats and anyone in the water (surfers, jet skiers, kayak, etc.) are supposed to keep a 100 yard distance from them. But, whales don't follow the law very well so if they are approaching the vessel or whatever your on you have to turn it off and wait until they are out of the 100 yard distance.

Baby again with mom back at the surface blowing air out

A calf needs to come to the surface at least every 3-5 minutes.

And a full grown whale can stay under for up to an hour. Which is why you can see the calf more.

But the momma whale keeps a very close eye on her baby and is never far, she usually only dives for 10-20 minutes.

We got to see something pretty amazing with this group of whales.

Synchronized diving. How cool was that?

The markings on the fins are as unique as fingerprints and are used to identify individual animals for tracking and research.

This splash is from a very active calf. He was breaching all over the place!

Can you see him?

He was having a grand time.

And there he goes again!

You can see the dorsal fin of mom in this pic while baby is jumping yet again.

This pic is the best example of the day. You can see one group closer to the boat blowing air and see another whale further off about to dive.

Whales all around us!

Heading back to the harbor, beautiful day on Maui.

One last whale.

It's even waving goodbye.

It was such a great trip. I haven't ever seen that many whales on a watching tour before. They were very active! As we were heading back into the harbor there was a whale that breached directly behind the boat! It was unbelievable! It had to have been only 50 or 75 yards behind us. I'm not even sad I didn't get a picture of it because it was so incredible. Though it would have been a pretty awesome picture.