Dive Log, April 7, 2005

Today's private whale watching charter was all about seeing if we could
find any Humpbacks left in Kona. Most have already headed back to
Alaskan Waters and we have not had a siting in over a week.

We decide to head south to Kealakekua Bay... the famous spot where
Captain Cook first landed in Hawaii. There is a monument erected there
in his honor and the bay is usually quite crowded with snorkel boats
full of tourists, so we rarely go there. However, today we were hoping
to find the pilot whales again that we saw yesterday and they tend to
hang out down south. We were also hoping to catch a fish so we thought
we'd swing by "VV" buoy on the way.

It turned out to be a great plan. We did not find the pilot whales but
we did find Humpbacks! Quite possibly we found the very last mom and
calf of the season. Right outside of Kealakekua Bay, they were just
hanging out with a couple of bottlenose dolphins. So, we just shut down
the boat and hung out with them. The calf was surfacing quite often and
mom was not, so we speculated that she was resting on the bottom while
jr. was going up and down. The water there was about 100 feet deep. At
one point after about a 5 minute wait, while we were wondering where
they would pop up next, we saw the baby right off our bow, slowly
coming up. It came over to check us out. It was amazing!!!! The water
was so clear that we had a great view of it from the boat. Then
suddenly Mom surfaced right under the baby pushing it off to the side
and away from us, as if to say, "C'mon jr, there will be no playing
with the boats!" She was huge. It was impressive. We were all squealing
with delight.

On the way home we caught 4 nice, small yellowfin tuna at "VV" buoy,
and later had a nice dinner.