Early Humpback Arrives On The Kona Coast! | November 8, 2026
An early November surprise on the Kona Coast: our first humpback whale of the season!
Today, November 8th, Captain Amy Aggergaard and Naturalist Dennis Fukushima were leading our 3-4 hour Pelagic Whale Watch Tour when our day on the water took an unexpected turn. After searching for Kona’s year-round pelagic whales and enjoying a lively pod of Hawaiian spinner dolphins, we encountered a humpback whale just outside of Honokohau Harbor!
The encounter offered a spectacular preview of the winter season to come. Our guests and crew watched as the whale surfaced several times, sending towering exhalations into the air before giving a beautiful look at its flukes as it dove deep.
“This early in November, the last thing we were expecting to see on our pelagic whale watch was a humpback”, said Captain Amy Aggergaard. “But this early individual made for a lovely reminder that you truly never know what you’ll find out there”.
After running our photograph of the whale’s flukes through Happywhale, a global digital database that uses photo-identification technology to identify individual humpbacks, our team made a thrilling discovery: the flukes did not perfectly match any existing images in the database. This means this may be a new whale to science! We will submit our photograph to Happywhale for further analysis, but the possibility of being the first to officially document a previously unidentified whale adds another layer to this already memorable encounter.
If this whale is new to science and receives a scientific designation, Naturalist Dennis proposes the nickname “Miki’ala”, a Hawaiian word meaning early/prompt!
Beginning December 19, we will welcome guests aboard our dedicated humpback whale-watching tours as thousands of migrating humpbacks return to the warm, protected waters surrounding the Hawaiian Islands for their annual winter season. But as this early sighting reminds us, you don't have to wait until winter to experience the magic of whale watching along the Kona Coast.
With year-round pelagic whales and the possibility of early-arriving humpbacks, every trip holds the potential for something extraordinary.
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