A hookah whale surfaced during an observation tour of the whales of Maui Ocean Adventures off the coast of Lahaina on January 29.
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Lahaina, Hawaii – He approaches the first season of whale observation in Hawaii.
On Maui, this means that the daily sign of boats escaping through the water carrying passengers wishing to spot the humpback whales. The giant mammals arrive in Hawaii hot waters between December and March of each year to mate and give birth.
“Think: a nightclub and a daycare,” explains Emma Nelson, 30, boat captain based in Lahaina. She estimates that 10,000 to 15,000 humpback whales cross the waters around Maui each year during the whale observation season.
“It’s like whale soup here,” says Nelson.
Nelson works for Maui Ocean Adventures, an observation company of whales founded in 2023 by his wife, Chrissy Lovett. Although they have almost three decades of experience in boat capital between the two, it is their first season which directs its own tours.
“We are actually ready to go two weeks before Lahaina fires,” recalls Nelson. “And, unfortunately, like so many others, we have lost everything.”
On August 8, 2023, a forest fire triggered by what officials now know that the power lines were shot in the historic city of Lahaina, burning almost everything on the ground.
When the fire exceeded Lahaina Harbor, Nelson, Livett and their crew were forced to flee in the water and get on a ship, where they could only make helpless flames like their entire workshop, all their vehicles and three boats collapsed in the flames.
“I would say that the boats alone had a replacement value of more than $ 700,000,” said Nelson. “And like many people, we were underestimated because no one expected the port burning.” In all, Lahaina suffered some $ 5.5 billion in damage, according to the US Fire Administration.
The Maui police department said the forest fire also killed more than 100 people.
Captain Emma Nelson (top of the center) runs a boat and speaks to a passenger during a Maui Ocean Adventures tour in Lahaina on January 29.
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Lovett, 47, says that a year and a half later, the community is still in shock.
“There is sadness, there is sorrow, there is anger, there is frustration,” she said. “But I see people moving forward.”
Including herself.
For 18 months, she and Nelson took each job to earn money Rebuild their business from zero. Last November, they finally saved enough to buy their first replacement boat, a former California sailboat. With the help of volunteer work hours by community members, they obtained the new boat – named Macy,, In honor of their Golden Retriever – ready to sail at the start of the whale observation season on December 1.
“This boat represents us, reconstructing and restarting and redoing,” she says. “It’s a new start for the boat and for us.”
But while Maui Ocean Adventures is back on water, the future is still uncertain. Lovett says they are always in debt of the construction of their business and then had to turn around and strengthen it as a result of fires. And while tourism, which is the backbone of Lahaina’s economy, is not what it was before the fire – it did not completely recover.
Maui Ocean Adventures First companion Lexie Jeffers, 25 the surface.
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Lovett says that she does not expect them to be in the dark soon, but they share what they have with the community.
“We save seats on each trip for fire survivors to help healing and their trauma,” she explains. “I was traumatized after this experience. I did not want to take a boat and I have been a boat captain for 25 years. And just be on a boat, to be with the fauna, I found it really as healing . “
Since December, Maui Ocean Adventures has offered nearly 200 free seats to the survivors of the late Lovett. “It’s more satisfactory than any money in the world.”
Overall, she says, the whale observation season is better for them than expected. They even see humpback whales for excursions; New members of a species whose number has rebounded in recent decades.
Proof that feedback is possible.
The released version of this story was published by Ravenna Koenig.