After doing our research, spending every day in the water and hosting thousands of snorkel trips, we do not recommend snorkeling or diving with full-face mask as there are some safety concerns we have discovered!  Consider these safety concerns before deciding to dive or not to dive with a full-faced mask. 1. Our number one concern is carbon dioxide poisoning. Many of the full-faced mask do … Read More

We’ve all heard the magical song of the whales, sung beneath the surface and answered miles away by other singers. But what scientist are still working to conclude is the actually hearing range of whales! Ultimate Whale Watch and Snorkel spent 10 days teaming up with Navy researchers this March to conduct research by measuring the hearing frequency of whales. … Read More

Saturday January 27th Ultimate Whale Watch owner and marine biologist Lee James got a call to lead the West Maui first responders team to aid the 8th entangled whale of the season (we are now at 11 reported entanglements since this was reported!). “Research is benefiting them long term, but this is short term and it’s exciting work” said Lee, after completing … Read More

Save Maui’s Manta Rays Team just sent out an update on their tagging research. We are grateful to be a part of their research team by donating the Wildlife Tag to help support ray research and learn how to better protect our marine ocean life! Manta Ray update! “On May 1, 2015, an adult male manta ray that we named … Read More

EARs- aka Ecological Acoustic Recordersare new technology being used by researchers tomonitor coral reef soundscapes among other purposes! According to NOAA, “The Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center and the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, developed the EAR program for these purposes: Establish patterns of sound-producing organisms in nearshore waters Monitor sound-producing marine species and their … Read More

Yet to be published, Robin Baird, Research Biologist with Cascadia Research Collective and Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, has shared some current results of their work from a resent research project they partnered with Ultimate on!     (Yep these are Melon-Headed whales!) Their research abstracts include info on false killer whales, their social, fishing and population stats; Rough toothed bottlenose dolphins (bet you didn’t know there was such thing), … Read More

Last month, Ultimate was able to assist with research conducted by the 100 Island Challenge Group. Their campaign has been to conduct surveys of the reef across the Pacific. Why so many studies of our reef systems? Because the ocean’s reef is the beating heart of the rest of the Marine World, here in Hawaii and the rest of the … Read More

  NASA Research Project by Ultimate whale watch Ultimate Whale Watch and Snorkel was stoked to support this month’s project that including conducting research on Maui’s reef using NASA’s state-of-the-art satellite sensors. Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Tom Bell and his team of NASA scientist spent week on our Ultimate Raft shooting photos and documenting Maui’s reef.   NASA’s goal was to … Read More

Ultimate Whale Watch and Snorkel was honored to financially support this month’s research project focused on learning more about the endangered False Killer Whales aka Pseudorca. With less than 150 of these animals left in Hawaii, learning how to better protect them is a research priority. Lead researcher, Robin Baird, Ph.D, Research Biologist, Cascadia Research Collective and Affiliate Faculty, Hawai’i … Read More