Whales Offshore

We’ve had several periods of very calm seas recently, and some friends borrowed our kayak one weekend to go offshore at Kealia beach. They paddled out over two miles and had an incredible encounter with the whales. It is illegal to approach whales in any boat, and a friend on Maui was cited by a federal ranger for swimming out next to some whales. But if you paddle out and wait, they sometimes approach you.

Our friends saw them surface less than 100 feet (30 m) away, could hear them breathe, and even saw the eye of one that seemed to be looking at them. They also saw the whales wave their flippers and flukes (tails) out of the water, but not so close-up thankfully. Remember that a baby humpback whale is the size of a car, and an adult is the size of a school bus.

Hearing that, my wife and I wanted to go too. So late one afternoon, with ocean still increadibly flat, we put the kayak in the water at Wailua Beach, and then we paddled straight out to sea:

We got some nice views of the coast that we land-lubbers aren’t so used to seeing. Here is Nonou, the Sleeping Giant profile:

And then we saw the whales! First there were several blows, and then one of them was breaching several times in a row. They get far out of the water and come down with a huge splash—it looked like fun to me. I wonder if it was a male trying to impress a female or just someone with an itch. They were still a mile or more away, this is the best photograph I took of them:

Much as we wanted to go nearer, the sun was going down behind Kalepa Ridge, so we had to head back in:

According to the GPS, we were only 1.3 miles (2km) offshore, and whales probably don’t come that close. You can see in the map above that we never went beyond the imaginary line connecting the outermost points of the island.

Back on the beach, we met some other friends who had the same idea and had just landed their kayak as well. Except they had started earlier, went further out, and were approached by the whales, maybe the same ones we saw. They said they were close enough to hear their whalesong above the water.

For the rest of us unlucky whale watchers, we’ll have to be happy with the live broadcast of whalesongs from Maui by whalesong.net. You’ll need the RealPlayer plugin to hear it, but it’s worth installing if you don’t already have it.

Pink and Blue

I’ve been slowing down with the sunrises, but not for a lack of them. They’re getting earlier and earlier, and I’ve slept through a few good ones. Last Wednesday, it was worth getting up at 6:20 am to catch this one:

You can see 3 bird silhouettes in the sky here, those are the white cattle egrets you see everywhere on Kauai. Now that I’ve lived in this neighborhood for a year and watched them, I think I’ve got them figured out. They roost in the trees on the banks of the Wailua river and Opaekaa stream, I’ve seen them when kayaking there. In the morning, they fly north in groups to the cattle in the fields around Kapaa, and in the evening they go south again to roost.

Snorkeling Photos

I don’t know whether I’m more excited to have an underwater digital camera or to show you the photos I took with it. I’ll start with the photos here and present the camera in another post.

Yesterday, we went snorkeling at Beach House beach, the tiny beach in Poipu that has the best snorkeling on the south shore. And because the waves are too high to swim on the north shore right now, it’s the best place on the island. It’s also in all the guide books, so it gets pretty crowded, but the fish are still there and don’t seem to suffer. We sometimes feed them fish food that we buy at the dive shop on the road to Poipu (Koloa Rd.), it attracts a big swarm of fish, although not the prettiest ones. Without food, you’ll still see lots of fish, just perhaps not as close:

During the fish feeding frenzy, I was able to catch this close up of a racoon butterflyfish (kikakapu in Hawaiian, meaning “strongly prohibited” apparently because they were sacred):

Later, I photographed this threadfin butterflyfish (also kikakapu in Hawaiian) by itself:

Then we swam out to where it was deeper and there are a few heads of coral. In this photo, my pregnant wife is pointing out the fish to her mother.

Rainbow Wrasse

Sorry for the hiatius, I’ve been very busy with my day job.

I was even working over the weekend, but we still had time to go snorkeling down in Poipu. We went to Beach House beach where there are always so many fish to see. There are two things I like there: the Beach House restaurant is gracious enough to let people lay on their manicured lawn under the palm trees, which keeps down the amount of sand we carry back to the car and the house, and while it’s reputation attracts a crowd, we almost always see new fish.

Yesterday’s new fish was the rainbow wrasse, called hinalea by the Hawaiians. The only picture I could find on the internet is from the “marine aquarium trade,” but it is almost exactly what we saw:

Photo credit: reefkeeping.com

P.S. I just recieved an underwater digital camera for (early) Christmas, so I will soon be taking these pictures myself, I hope.

SHARK!

We finally saw a shark here on Kauai, right at our favorite swimming beach. And not just one, but two. However, they were both small young ones that had washed up dead in one of the storms last week. They were drying out on the sand and being eaten by crabs and insects, and it was rather sad to see such a beautiful animal like this.

Surprisingly, they were both scalloped hammerhead sharks, which I think of as a rare animal but is in fact quite common in Hawaii. They are called scalloped because of the rounded bumps on the leading edge of the “hammer” and named mano kihikihi in Hawaiian. It does appear that a hammerhead shark will attack humans, but more for protection than food, and not with the deadly consequences of other sharks, due to their smaller mouth.

We have heard of a non-fatal shark attack at Wailua beach, one source interviews the surfer who said it was about 75 yards/meters from shore and was probably mistaken for a turtle, but it is not listed at hawaiisharks.com. I doubt that sharks would come closer to the beach where we swim.

The shark in this picture is about 18 inches (45 cm) long: