This morning we headed into Lahaina for a boat ride over to Lanai. We were scheduled to go with Pacific Whale Foundation - a non-profit society looking out for the benefit of whales and other marine life in and around Maui.
Our boat was the "Ocean Explorer" -- it seats 48 passengers with 2 naturalists and a captain. It was a great boat. However, even luckier for us, there were only 4 passengers this morning -- Derek, Dana, myself and one other woman. We had this HUGE boat all to ourselves. We also had the two naturalists and our captain.
It took about an hour to get to Lanai. Once we were there we instantly spotted a pod of "spinner dolphins". Amazingly, there were about 200 dolphins in the group. The first 5 minutes there was a 2nd tour boat with us. After that, we had the dolphins all to ourselves. They played around the boat the entire time. They were spinning and jumping everywhere -- unfortunately, I was not able to get a picture of them jumping. I did take a small video clip at the beginning though -- I will post it here -- it does show a few dolphins jumping. We stayed with the dolphins for an hour before taking the long way back to Lahaina. We were looking for other dolphin species on the return trip, but did not see any.
We were very lucky to see the dolphins. The naturalist said that yesterday it had rained all day at Lanai and the day before they were not able to find the dolphins. They also said they had never seen this many together ---- they were very noisy as well -- slapping the surface and talking to each other.
I've also included some pictures of a range marker (as you enter Lahaina harbour) and a fairway buoy --- because I'm sure everyone is interested in these (actually, I will use them in my Piloting course presentations in the fall).
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