• Print
• E-mail
• Add to My Trips

For a good time, follow the whales. The big boys of Planet Ocean vacation in some of the world's finest locations: the warm lagoons and bays of Hawaii and Mexico in winter, the clear waters of Canada and Alaska in summer. In some ways, they're like the seriously wealthy, tracking the sun to the world's playgrounds.

The phenomenon hasn't escaped the travel industry, which thrives when the humpback, gray and blue whales come to town. Once hunted and killed in vast numbers on the oceans of the world, whales are now the star performers of the seas. Nearly 100 countries have burgeoning whale-watching industries; only a handful of nations still allow their slaughter. Maui, a onetime whaling capital, is now a whale-watching capital, drawing nearly 900,000 tourists during the humpback-whale season Dec. 15 through May 15. Many visitors arrive with whale watching at the top of their wish list, say tourism officials. They're rarely disappointed. "There are so many whales, you can stand on shore and watch them leap out of the water," Seal Beach resident Wendi Rothman told me after one of her repeat excursions.

I wasn't impressed. I thought of the seemingly endless whale-watching cruises I've taken off the coast of California in search of migrating gray whales. The scenario for those trips was always the same: Someone yelled "whale" and pointed out to sea. Everyone rushed to the side of the boat, cameras clicked, and children started screaming, "Where is it? I don't see it."

Parents didn't answer because they couldn't see it either.

Finally, a narrator came on the boat's intercom system. "If you look closely off the port — that's left — side of the boat, you'll see what we call a footprint," the voice said. "It's hard to see, but it's an area of calm water. The whale just dove down, so we'll hang out here awhile and wait for it to surface." The boat slowed, bobbing on the waves while passengers breathed diesel fumes and scoured the water for signs of a whale. If they were lucky, they saw more footprints or — more surprising — a tail fluke.

I've been dozens of times, and although I always enjoy being on the water and seeing other marine life, I've yet to bond with a gray whale.

"It's not like seeing whales in California," said Rothman, who takes family and friends to Maui as often as possible to watch humpbacks.

A couple of years ago, I went to find out for myself. The Maui boosters were right. I stood at Kaanapali Beach and watched amazingly athletic humpback whales cavorting offshore. In a 15-minute period, I counted eight whales. Some leapt straight up out of the water and turned somersaults in midair before splashing back down, a behavior called a "breach."

"I've rarely experienced more joy in nature than in witnessing these magnificent creatures breach," Maui Mayor Alan Arakawa told me recently. "It gives you a tremendous sense of awe."

About 7,000 humpback whales visit the waters surrounding Maui each winter to mate and calve after a 3,500-mile journey from Alaska. Their annual arrival makes headlines in the Maui newspaper and spawns parties on shore. "Everyone gets very excited each year when the first whale is spotted," said Terryl Vencl, director of the Maui Visitors Bureau.

This year the first sighting was Oct. 23. By the middle of this month, thousands of whales will be swimming in the warm, blue waters of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, a 1,370-square-mile preserve surrounding the islands. Most of the whales congregate in the waters separating Maui from the islands of Molokai and Lanai, a narrow set of channels seven to 13 miles wide.

The number of whales will peak in late February and begin to fall off by the end of March. During the whales' stay, tourists will pump $1 billion into the Maui economy.

Gray whales may be elusive as they make their round-trip journey along the California coast, but they become downright friendly when they reach the lagoons of central Baja.

"If you go whale watching off our coast [Southern California], you may see a dorsal fin, a tail and a snout," said Mark Ryan, curator of marine mammals at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. "Gray whales aren't known for being athletic; they're pretty sedate."

They're also in the middle of a 12,000-mile round-trip journey to their winter breeding grounds in Baja — the longest migration undertaken by any mammal.