Everything You Need To Know About Whale Watching On Maui

 You can also go on the Trilogy, which is a catamaran that I really love. It’s a great boat. They have boat trips that aren’t specifically whale watches, but just for cruising and you can still see whales. Trilogy does that. You can also go on a snorkel trip over to Molokini, and you’ll see whales on that when whales are here. So you can combine it, and do a couple different things on that boat trip.

Alternative to Boats

Now, if you get seasick, that’s okay. There are plenty of places you can go. There are lookouts or being at the beach you’ll be able to see whales as well. One of the really popular ones is the lookout right by McGregor Point where the lighthouse is going from Maalaea over to Lahaina. There’s a really pretty lookout and you can see great expanse, and there’s parking area that you can go right there as well.

Tips and Tricks

Back to the boats, there are a couple of secrets. You’ll want to go early in the morning because the wind picks up midday in Maui pretty traditionally. So if you want to go on a whale watch, I would recommend that you hit that 6, 7, 8 o’clock in the morning whale watch, and you’re back by 11:00 or 12:00. That’s going to be a better experience. Also, one of the cool things on the boats that they’ll do is they have a hydrophone and they drop it into the water and you can hear the whale sing. And each year the whales have a different song and they all sing the same song.

It’s really crazy. If that’s intriguing, there’s tons of research that they’ve done, but it’s amazing. Now, if you’re in Maui and you’re out on the beach and you’re out in the ocean, if you put your head under the water every once in a while, you can even hear the whale songs when you’re on the shore. So some cool things about the whales. I just really love watching the whales. I’ve been here for 22 years. When I see a whale, it still makes me scream and holler with excitement. It’s just an unbelievable part of nature. And they come to Maui to have babies. So there are about 10,000 to 11,000 whales that come to Maui every winter, and they come here to birth and then to make new babies.

And there’s all this activity because of all of that. And it’s right out in the Maalaea Bay. They call it the basin, between Kahoolawe, Lanai, then the West Maui and South Maui. There’s this big area where the whales just come and hang out. It is spectacular, and I would tell you definitely get out on a boat and check it out. The whales come way up from Alaska and they travel all the way through the ocean to Hawaii. They do that jaunt every year in the late fall, early winter. And then they head back up in March and April. And when they get back up to Alaska, that’s where they do all their feeding. They don’t eat anything here when they’re on the island. They eat very tiny little fish called krill, and they do that up in Alaska. So you might have seen in Alaska whale watch where they show them feeding, and it’s pretty epic to see that too.

Please, if you have questions about whale watching, if you want some tips on who to go with, where you’re going to go, just let me know. I’d be happy to point you in the right direction. If you’re staying on the west side of the island, you go out of Lahaina Harbor. If you’re staying on the south side of the island, you can either go out of the Kihei boat ramp with a small boat, or you can go out on Maalaea on a large boat. So hope that helps. Be sure to get out and watch the whales. They are truly amazing beasts.