Playtime in the Nursery

Every year thousands of humpback whales leave their rich feeding grounds and come to Maui during winter. I wonder why they would want to leave Alaska at this time of year. They come here for two reasons - to have babies (called calves) and to make more babies. We went out to see if we could find some. And to take pictures of some. At first, every time that we saw something I snapped a picture of the sky or got it too late and just got a splash in the water.

But pretty soon, I was able to get shots of tails with Haleakala in the background. The area between the islands of Maui, Lanai, Molokai, and Kahoolawe forms a kind of shallow warm bathtub. The perfect place to bring up a baby whale. A kind of whale nursery.

Almost every group or pod of whales we found had a little one with them. The baby was learning the ropes (or should I say - testing the waters?) I was able to get a couple of photos of some whale tales. One of them breached and went way up in the air, but I missed it. It was too close and it scared me so much that I couldn't focus the camera.

We found out that whales have very bad breath. Yes, we could smell them. They make a strange whistling sound when they exhale and "blow" all the bad air out of their lungs. Did you know that whale babies will drink about seventy-five gallons of mommy's milk every day? That's almost as bad as our family was when all the kids were still living at home. These kids' mamas don't have to run down to Winegar's to restock on milk - they just have to go back to Alaska. It turns out that there is no food down here for the whales to eat, so while they are here, they are fasting and using up blubber. And I thought the real reason was that they couldn't afford to eat down here. Paying over four dollars for a gallon of milk, that would be about $300 a day. No wonder Shon and Mel came back home from Hawaii.