Whale Watching in Maui

If you are ever planning a trip to Hawaii, I'd like to recommend that you go in the timeframe of mid-January through March, preferably February. You'll get to see humpback whales on their annual visit to the Hawaiian Islands. The whales feed in the polar regions during the heat of the summer, but move to Hawaii in the winter months to feed and put on a show for tourists like me. We were lucky enough to be in Maui in the village of Kaanapali for a week in late February and everywhere we went with a view of the water we saw whales spouting and breaching in the distance. We weren't ten minutes out of the Kahului airport driving along the coast and we saw whales blowing spouts up into the air just off the coast we were driving along. We played golf later in the week and could see whales spouting and breaching off in the distance as we drove down the fairway.

We knew we were going during whale watching season but never expected to see them every day and so frequently, even from our hotel balcony. I enjoyed waking up each morning, taking my coffee and breakfast out on the balcony and watching the whales. One morning I watched a standup paddle boarder well offshore with a curious whale within 20-30 feet of him. That whale could have easily knocked that guy off his board or worse if got annoyed with him. I didn't get any good photos of that, but that seemed a little too close for comfort. Another morning, I saw a small boat off the coast, got my 200m lens on my camera and shot a bunch of photos of the small boat getting very close to a mother humpback and her calf. You can see junior sticking his face up out of the water to the left of mom in the photo below.

The guy in the boat wasn't following the humpback and her calf. Mom seemed to be teaching junior how you handle boats that get too close. She stayed near his boat for a good half hour.

Over and over the mother humpback whale would spout, then roll over and flap her fin on the water and junior would pop up and try to do the same. It had to be a moment of that guy's lifetime that he and his passengers will relive over and over again.

We booked a whale watching tour in Kaanapali on a large catamaran with probably 50 people and rode around the sea between Maui and Lanai and saw plenty of whales, some relatively up close. Unlike the guy in the small boat above, the tour boats follow the rules on keeping a minimum distance from the whales. They can be fined a large sum of money for getting too close.

The coolest part of the catamaran tour happened to be totally unrelated to the whales. I was standing on the net on the front of the catamaran and happened to look straight down as the boat cruised right over a 10 foot tiger shark in the water below us. I wasn't quick enough to snap a photo, but it was totally unexpected and the highlight of the boat tour for me.

Kaanapali on the island of Maui is a wonderful place the visit, but if you can time it to see the whales, you won't forget the experience.