3-3-10 Wednesday

My brother Doug arrived on the island last Saturday for a week's visit and hopeful whale encounters. The day he arrived was perfect conditions with the exception of being a day we had a tsunami scheduled to hit the islands and the glassy and calm ocean was host to boats standing off shore but the beaches were empty and shore access denied for obvious reasons! The next day we were visited with rain and wind. The wind has been very strong since then and today was no exception.

We decided to go to Ukemehame where the manta's come in and if the wind was strong, it would be off shore and the seas reasonably flat. We got there late in the afternoon and although initially the area of reef we planed to visit was in reasonable condition with the wind line further south, the conditions deteriorated as we readied to go out. We went anyway just go get wet. By the time we arrived over the likely manta grounds, the wind wanted to send us further off shore but getting in the water and towing our wave skis was no problem and we were able to swim from the south end to the north end in search of mantas. No sightings and the conditions of wind and chop kept getting worse. To add to the picture, the sun had set behind a dark cloud which brought the level of light down significantly.

We decided to swim back to the south end and then go in. As we approached the south end of the reef, I noticed something black and white and large up at the surface ahead and immediately figured it was a manta on the surface. As it got closer, I immediately realized I was looking at the pectoral fin of a humpback that was swimming in towards the beach in front of me! We were in about 25-30' of water and this was quite a surprise. I had a video camera which I had not checked prior to this and it wasn't until after the whales had left that I realized that it was zoomed in to full telephoto and I failed to get anything reasonable as a result.

Fortunately Doug got some shots of the whale as it passed inshore of him:

The whale headed back to deeper water after passing us by and then came back at me and I had a fantastic encounter of it heading at me and then passing by and then a strong kick of its tail like Doug photographed above as it went out to the deeper water. After it passed, I caught glimpse of a second whale that likely had done the same circle around us but in a larger circle and not visible to us at the time. The whales stopped on the surface about 50 yards further out but by this time, we realized that the conditions were really not good and it was time to head to shore. We actually encountered two mantas after this but they were down on the bottom and it was just too dark because of the lack of sun.

This was the first time either of us had had whales come in to check us out while we were snorkeling over a reef with the thought of whales being the last thing on our minds!