This is my SOPHMORE year in this project! Here is my "blog" ( I guess that's what it's called nowadays?). HAYN
Maui Whales and Crittercam March 22nd
Aloha from Maui!
Well, I arrived here on Tuesday and we went to work Wednesday with Crittercam in attempt to deploy more video cameras on the Humpbacks off the waters of Maui and the surrounding islands of Lana'i, Moloka'i, and Kaho'olawe. We saw quite a bit of active whales in the AM but no competitive pods (our intended subjects) which is comprised of a lone female and several competing males. At about 12:30pm we came upon a 9 animal competive group off the shores of Ka'anapali and tracked them past Lahaina where we soon were surrounded by whale watch boats. We don't like the whale watch boats around us when we're trying to do this kind of work just in case some overzealous tree hugger thinks we're harrassing the whales. It would look kind of strange if you saw me standing at the bow of a 17' Boston Whaler holding a 16' pole with something (a video camera) at the end of it within very close proximity of the whales (sometimes right next to the boat). Anyway, we stayed with the whales and soon they headed out to the ocean away from the harbor. After we were 10miles from the harbor the group had dwindled down to 7 animals now (two chumps left the group). I strapped on my gear and we proceeded to get ready for an attempt. The waters were very choppy and I wasn't sure how we'd pull this one off. The only good thing was that we had been with the pod for over 3 hrs now and they might be very familiar with us. When I was ready to go we continued to track them waiting for the right moment for them to surface and make an attempt. This is the FUN [censored]! Man, my heart is starting to pump as I relive the encounter. We wanted to get it on the female or the primary escort. The whales surfaced and we moved in; we were now in the middle of "whale soup" again. They would take a few more breaths before going back down. The female was off to the right side about 10 ft from the boat and she didn't want to surface as she hesitated and moved further away where she finally did, BUT the escort was coming up right next to her! He was about 8 ft off the side. THIS WAS IT! NO [censored]IN WAY...he came up and I positioned the pole over his back and slapped that suction cup right on him. It looked good so far as he went down and I could feel him pulling and then I just pulled the pole as I saw the camera underneath the water and it released. I didn't even bother with the release string as I knew if there was good suction he'd just "take" the camera with him. I saw the camera on his back as he went down and moved in front of our boat! HELL YEAH! ONE SHOT; PERFECT! It was like I had done this before or something LOL! It was too easy I couldn't believe it. Now all we had to do was wait for his next surface to make sure it was still on and didn't float to the top. About 4 mins later he surfaced.
As you can see we were in business! The camera was programmed to come off at 5:30 so we could have a chance to track it if we lost them before it got dark. With every repeated surface we saw that the camera was still on. At about 5:30 they surfaced again with the camera still attached. We knew if it worked right it would be coming off any minute. At 5:32 we heard the "beep" "beep" with the tracking antenae. I looked off to my right side and about 30yds in the distance was the floating camera! Unbelievable! It was right next to us basically. I retrieved the camera as see here:
Now all we had to do was hope it recorded and everything else worked. We got back to the Whale House and it was "BUTTAH". We watched the video which showed numerous charges by the Primary Escort (wearing the camera) at challenging males. Pretty cool [censored] watching him chase after and sometimes hit the other males. So it was a pretty awesome day where everything went PERFECT! Not as intense as THE BIG DAY last year but very cool nonetheless. Here are some other photos I took from earlier in the day of the same pod before we attempted to deploy crittercam.
This whale above and below breached about 20 ft off the right side of the boat! It was AWESOME! All your hear is this huge (I don't know what) noise of water I guess and your head turns to see this! AMAZING! I was kind of lucky to capture this sequence of photos (above and below).
Well that's about it for now may be next week (I'm going back to O'ahu tomorrow) will bring more excitement! Until then...
ALOHA from Maui!
