I flew back from Maui last evening. We went on eight whale watching trips: three on Saturday with Ultimate Whale Watch, three on Sunday with Ultimate Whale Watch, and two yesterday with Maui Ocean Adventures.
Out of the eight whale watching excursions, we had two that were quite good, three that were not so good, and three that were OK. Our best was yesterday afternoon from 12:30 to 2:30. We followed an amazing competition pod for about an hours. At least eight males were chasing the female. The males were doing huge head lunges, ramming each other, and other aggressive behavior. We had two of the challengers come over to our boat and swim across the bow. We saw one breach when a new challenger joined the competition pod.
Our second best whale watch was on Sunday evening from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM with Ultimate Whale Watch. We just happened to drop the hydrophone very near the escort and he was a little ticked off. He surfaced and did a peduncle throw at the boat.
We had some great under the boat activity; an escort swam over to the boat and glared at us. We also had a curious calf that came over to the boat.
We were told that the smaller companies would probably stop offering whale watching trips by April 15 since the number of whales was decreasing daily.