A quiet and peaceful day about a mile off shore at Laniapoku, Maui. A mother, calf and

escourt would surface from time to time for air. At one such surfacing, the calf showed up

about 30 yards from me. It came in to investigate me and the mother showed up to herd it

away.

The escourt must have been off elsewhere and not tending to business. About 45 minutes

later. All three surfaced about 50 to 75 yards off my bow and hung on the surface for a

minute or two. I did some whistling and rapped on the surfski hoping the noise would bring

them over. When they dove, it looked like they might be headed my way so I had the

camera ready incase I could see them below the surface. The next thing I knew, the

escourt came blasting out of the water about 25 or 30 feet away! Although the UW housing

has a wide angle port that makes it effectively about a 20 mm wide angle lens topsides and

it doesn't focus properly out of the water, I took the shot anyway:

In the shot, the whale is on his way down and rotating for a landing on his back. The wide

angle lens makes him look smaller and further away than he actually was. The wave he

made when his 40 or 50 tons of mass returned to the ocean was about 2' of white water

when it hit my surfski and caused me to roll over. :D The sound from the splash as well as

the splash itself was also very impressive!