Searching for Offshore Odontocetes

  A weekly treat aboard the Safari Explorer's Hawaii itinerary is a chance to spend an afternoon cruising the deep offshore waters of the Big Island to search for different kinds of marine mammals. The underwater topography drops off to thousands of feet just a couple of miles off the Kona coast, and this is where very interesting odontocetes like pilot whales, spotted dolphins, sperm whales, false killer whales, beaked whales, and other rare encounters are most likely.

  We were lucky this week on our search as our chief mate Amy spotted some splashing over where a few fishing boats were maneuvering. As we crept in to investigate it became apparent that we had a huge pod of active pan-tropical spotted dolphins most likely going after the same fish the fishermen were. The dolphins wasted no time in zipping over to our vessel to ride the bow wave and our wake just behind the boat. I had a great time trying to time the shutter just right to catch the dolphins right as they would leap up out of the water.

 After a while the spotted dolphins continued on their way and we settled back into search mode. It was only a half an hour later when another species was sighted, this time is was short-fin pilot whales. This pod seemed content with slowly swimming and sometimes logging at the surface with their large dorsal fins sticking out. These toothed whales can be up to 18ft and can swim fast enough to catch large tuna. They are one step down from orca as top predators in the ocean.