Sunday 15 March 2009

Fruitless pursuits

This has been a strange year when it comes to whale watching. February and March is usually the time the humpback whales are in my local waters just off the cliffs, but I've only seen one and that was just as I arrived at the shoreline and before I had a chance to get the camera ready. I've been hearing them at night though, so know they're still around, but even their calls are becoming rarer, after all, it's time for them to head back to the Arctic for food after breeding and giving birth around the Hawaiian Islands.

I'm going to try for the next month to see if I can take a photo of one - hopefully breaching but a fin or tail slap would do just as well - they do that in the bay around here but never when I have a camera with me...

Unfortunately my favourite whale watching spot was taken by fishermen, so not wanting to disturb them I went back to my sunrise photo spot. The site taken up by the shore-anglers is great because I can look into the bay to spot whales, but the other spot is right in the middle of the bay's shoreline, so there's a huge expanse of ocean to scan and it's easy to miss a whale on the surface. Oh well, my fellow whale watcher in the picture above gave up shortly after I took the picture and I gave up half an hour later when it started to rain.

Still, it's a wonderful place to just sit down and watch and listen to the ocean. Nothing relaxes me more.

2 comments:

Devany said...

Tom,

We live on the water near Honolii and saw a lot of whales last month, but since the big storm we have not seen a single one. On my blog (www.myhawaiianhome.blogspot.com) there is video I took of a whale playing with a cruise ship as it came in one morning. Look on the left column for videos.

Tom said...

Devany - thanks for stopping by the blog again (I remember you from a few months ago!). That's a great video, the whale just suddenly appears out of nowhere!

Are you sure it's a calf though? It looked quite big to me!

Oh, and I tried again this evening to spot whales but again with no luck. I only see them when I don't have the camera. Sigh...