Yes, this whale, and a lot of the others were quite close to shore. In fact, they sometimes seek the shallower water near the off-shore reef.
The humpback whales come to Hawai'i to give birth and to mate. There is nothing here for them to eat, so they fast from the time they leave Alaska until they return to their feeding grounds there. When a cow gives birth, she will often move to shallow water to discourage horny males from bothering here and her calf. The males spend 3-5 months here, and sex is the only thing on their minds. Most pods consist of a mother, a calf, and a male escort. The escort tries to keep other males from bothering the mother and baby. He hopes that, if he does a good job, he will be around when the female decides it is time to mate, and will get lucky, out of gratitude or by just being in the right place at the right time. Other males will approach the pod, and try to impress the female, hoping that she is getting ready to mate. They do a lot of tail slapping, spy-hopping and breaching, trying to impress the female or drive of the escort, so they can take over the job. Out on the water, one sees a lot of 3 whale pods just floating around and resting; perhaps the mother will give some instructions to the calf, to teach it to raise its fin or do a mild tail slap. Things generally get interesting only when one or more other males approach the group and disturb the piece and quiet. All of the humpback whales who come here for the winter were born here, and make the long, long trip back to paradise to create and train the new generation. When the mother feels the calf is strong enough, she leads it back to Alaska, where it can find food other than mother's milk. She spends as little time here as is necessary, since the enormous drain of feeding such a huge baby taxes her strength and causes her to lose much of her body mass. The males stay for most of the season, from Nov until April, because this is their only opportunity to mate. Dan Matyola http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/danieljmatyola On Sat, Feb 8, 2014 at 2:03 AM, David Mann <[email protected]> wrote: > On Feb 8, 2014, at 4:10 pm, Daniel J. Matyola <[email protected]> wrote: > >> http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=17676226 > > Nice, that looks very close to shore. The water must get very deep very > quickly. > > Cheers, > Dave > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
