“When do whales breach?”

If I could schedule it - I would

However, on the morning of July 28th, we were in the right place at the right time

Meet Hemlock and her 1st calf

Hemlock and her calf just made the looong journey from Cabo San Lucas to here, their feeding grounds. During their migration, Hemlock never stopped to eat, only stopping to let her calf rest and nurse an astounding 100+ gallons of milk a day.

During that migration, Hemlock, and all other humpbacks, will lose up to a 1/3 of their body weight (80-90,000lbs). In the feeding grounds she will gain up to 12 pounds an hour.

So when DO whales breach?

RIGHT FREAKING NOW

Hemlock and her calf continued to breach for a solid 10 minutes

I think it’s important to mention, wildlife does not exist to impress us. Hemlock and her calfs behavior while amazing, was not for us. While we have a lot of questions about wildlife behavior including breaching whales, we do know that they do this wether or not boats are present, you can see the behavior from shore when no boats are out and you can see it on a whale watching boat, this behavior is random and not for us.

Why do whales breach?

There’s a couple thoughts as to why humpback whales breach. We know we see it more in the breeding grounds - perhaps to impress the ladies. We know sometimes large container ships stir them up, maybe the whales are trying to figure out what is happening. We sometimes see a single breach when behavior is changing, such as from travel to feeding. Humpbacks do get lot’s of barnacles on them, breaching could be an attempt to dislodge those and whale lice. Maybe it helps with their digestion. My personal favorite reason would be - if you could breach your own 80-90,000 lb body out of the water, wouldn’t you?