After observing the the amazing amount of whales that are currently in the channel between Maui and Molokai, we decided to venture out on a whale watching boat. The last time we were here, we choose the Pacific Whale Foundations cruise, and although they did an excellent education job, we felt that the experience on the water fell short of our expectations. This time, we ended up choosing Maui Adventure Cruise and I would highly recommend them. They aren’t the only ones, though doing a good job on the water and I wanted to explain how we evaluated the boats.

Quantifiable Respect for the Whales
It is one thing to say, I have a naturalist on board the ship, it is another to be associated with a research institution. Without a doubt, the Pacific Whale Watch Foundation is doing great work, and we did actually buy our whale souvenirs from them to help support their research. But they aren’t the only “game in town” now. Maui Adventure Cruises are a Hawaii Whale Research Foundation sponsor, so they were one our list of choices. There were others that were associated with the University of Hilo and other research causes as well.

Size of the Boat
This is the item that bothered us on the last whale trip – we on board with almost 150 people and we didn’t have the ability to see on both sides of the boat. Whale are unpredictable in their swimming patterns, in fact we had three males and a female change direction on us four times while cavorting in the water. It was an amazing sight but if we were stuck on one side of the boat, we wouldn’t have seen any of this interaction. Find out how many people are on the whale excursion and how many total people the boat can hold.

Time of Day
Some of the excursion are only held in the afternoon because the boats go on snorkeling cruises in the morning. On most days, the waves get larger as the day goes on, If you choose a small boat, that means you’ll get wet and possibly sea sick. The earlier in the morning you choose to leave, the less likely it will be that this happens.

For us, the small boat at 10:00 was a perfect combination. We did hit higher seas north of Lahaina, while we were following the four whales I mentioned earlier but most of the time, the seas were perfectly calm. They limited the boat to 38 people, but we had only 30, so it was easy to move to both sides of the boat or just stand up to see the other side. And we were so low in the water, the whales appeared right next to the boat. All in all, a great adventure.