a whale tale

as you might remember ...

when we came to hawaii 2 years ago we had an incredible time whale watching

we got VERY lucky and got a lot of fun shots.

SO ... when we decided to go again this trip
i was a bit nervous.
i figured it was going to be hard to top what we already experienced.
WELL ...
today did not disappoint.

we saw something COMPLETELY different than we did 2 years ago.

this time-
rather than a mom and calf -
we experienced a 'competition pod'.
what that means is there were 8-10 whales together ...

all fighting over 1 female.

this meant we saw a TON of activity

we even saw them rise out of the water and 'chest bump'

as part of their fight.

it was amazing!!

of course i still found the mom and baby SO fun-
but what we saw today was so different.
and the boys (especially drew) LOVED it.

an interesting side note -
while we were on our watch -
the pod that we were following was also being followed by a filming crew for BBC for a show being produced called 'ocean giants'.

because it is a 'research' boat, they could approach the whales and did not have to wait for the whales to approach them.
it was crazy to watch how close they got to each other!

those whales are HUGE and i have to say that if one popped up next to me and was bigger than my boat -
i don't know that i would stay quite as chilled as they were ;)