Hi,
I am thinking of visiting Hawaii for the first time.The Big Island is a must do because of the active volcano there.

My second must do is Whale watching.I know Maui is the best place for this. Have thought of island hopping to Maui to do this.My question is how good is the Whale watching on the Big Island compared to Maui? Would I be just as well off to just tour the Big Island or do both islands?
Thanks for any info.

Whale watching can be good from either island. Maui might be slightly better. Whale season is late November - end of March.

Humpback whale season is November - March, but you can see other kinds of whales all year around the Big Island. Dan MCSweeney offers a good tour. I last went out on his tour in 1999 - we did have fun & we did see whales. My favorite is still Maui during humpback season with Captain Steve.

Dottie -

We saw whales from the lanai of our oceanfront Big Island (Kona) condo in January one year. We also went to Maui that year and could not believe all the whales - we took a whale watching trip, but we actually saw more on our own just driving around the island. It was a sight to behold.

Dottie,

I was recently on the BI and took a whale watching tour which was very good, but one thing the tour operators do not tell you when you are booking a tour is that by law they cannot get any closer than 100 YARDS from a whale! 100 yards is a long way away! So what happens is you are out on the boat and they ask everybody to start looking for spouting or breaching and then when they see that activity they head in that direction. But then they must stop 100 yards away from whales. Now, you could get lucky and they stop 100 yards away and then the whales submerge and then breach closer to the boat which is great. Then the tour operator has to shut off engines if whales are closer than 100 yards.

Anyway, the point of this information is that a whale watching tour does not get you very close at all, no matter what kinds of pictures are printed on the brochure! I enjoyed the tour, but in retrospect would not spend the $75 for the views we had of whales. Also, the guarantee that you will see whales is pretty useless since, if it is humpback season at all, of course you will see them, you can see them from shore, from the road, from just about anyplace on the island!

Maria

Maria is right in her comments but... Good Captains will watch the direction of a pack of whales and will try and position the boat in the path. We did 2 tours on Maui and both times we got Mugged (termed used when whales come right next to boat). It is great and would reccomend to anyone. Litterally 5 or 6 feet from the boat. They can also swim under the boat and if your boat has a glass bottom, it is an impressive site.
Not all trips have this success. Mornings are better, but they are active all day.

Good Luc

Our best whalewatching experience was a boat from Maui, town of Lahaina. We also tried it as part of a combined whalewatch/snorkeling tour from Port Allen, Kauai which we only saw distant whales, and the ocean was too rough in February to do snorkeling at the better spots near the NaPali coast. If your from the mainland, you can see humpback whales from Massachussetts. Our closest and most successful whalewatches have been from Plymouth, Mass. during the summer-fall months, although the scenery may be nicer in Hawaii.