Exploring the Deep Blue in Hawaii

A humpback whale doing a peduncle throw

  While relaxing in the Hawaiian Islands after a winter of working on a small adventure cruise ship, Heidi and I decided to head out in slightly smaller boats to explore the waters around the islands. We went out on our favorite whale watching boat, the Ocean Adventurer with Pacific Whale Foundation and our good friend Captain Ben.

Heidi hovering over the deep blue

Brown Booby overhead

  Maui is one of the best places in the world to look for humpback whales, especially in March. We had a great show with active whales and even a flyby from a brown booby. There has been a lot of talk about the number of humpbacks in the area this season not being as high as usual, with the possibility of many whales staying up in Alaska. It will be interesting to see if the whales are more dense than usual up in Alaska when I head there next month. While I didn't get any great breach pictures from this trip we did get a close up view of a whale peduncle throwing, where the latter third of the whale flies violently out of the water.

  Getting to sit almost water level on a small boat and encounter whales the size of buses is an amazing thing, but Heidi and I wanted to take it one step further and actually explore the offshore underwater world ourselves. The best company for doing this in Hawaii is located on the Kona coast, it is WHOA, or Wild Hawaii Ocean Tours. These guys take you out in a military grade Navy SEAL attack boat looking for offshore critters.

  We had wonderful weather for an offshore adventure but were a little unlucky with finding charismatic megafauna. We did still jump in to 6,000ft deep water just to experience the most intense blue you could ever imagine and to check out some floating debris which provided a home for lots of tiny baby pelagic fish. These pictures of Heidi in front of the tiny school of fish turned out to be some of my favorite from the whole trip.

   It is a hard feeling to describe hovering over the abyss of 6,000ft of ocean. I imagine for most it would be quite unnerving, but there is something calming about it. I guess it is a life on the ocean for me.