Weather and whales

The whales are here and so is wonderful calm weather, as yet the trade winds have not come through making glorious days out on the ocean. However the calm weather makes our temperatures remain warmer than normal winters in the past 7 years.

I always worry and make notes with the weather and the whales, the Humpbacks that come to these waters for mating and calving are fasting during their time away from colder feeding grounds, though they may take an opportunistic feed, the energy expelled to feed outweighs the nutritional benefits of food found in tropical and temperate zones.

This too may be said about warmer waters, currently our temperatures are about 26C, though not as warm as summer they are staying about 1-2C warmer than the first 5 years we were here. This could mean the whales stay in the deeper cooler water.

 My question is does the water temperature effect the fat burn in the whales. To me it makes sense and whales have been both in the islands and further out, however if they are burning more energy due to the water temperature how is it effecting them on the mating grounds.

We again as always will be making notes during the season and trying to find common ground with the results from the last years. So far all our trips have been good, only one we did not swim on. This happens, interaction is never a given with wild animals and all behaviours seen are awesome and spectacular.


I will keep posting on this and and changes we see from previous years, lets hope that these climate occurrences do not make it harder for the whale populations that are still recovering from the hunting era.