Last season, Pacific Whale Foundation's Hawaiʻi team logged its first humpback on November 18, 2025. In the last week of October 2026, nobody had announced a first whale for the 2026–27 season yet. That puts the first spout off South Kīhei Road within the next few weeks if the timing matches last year. It also puts the season's first sighting right after a summer of headlines about Hawaiʻi's koholā declining.
The decline is real, and most of it is in the past. The big drop happened during a marine heatwave around 2015. In the 2026 counts, Maui's numbers stayed close to 2025's. If your morning on the Kamaole sand turns up fewer tail slaps than you remember, the cause is probably the weather or the vantage point. A new crash is unlikely.
The decline happened around 2015, and the paper measuring it ends in 2023
In August 2026, Pacific Whale Foundation announced a study it led with more than 20 partner organizations. It was published in Marine Mammal Science. The full paper by Barber-Meyer and colleagues uses photo identification of whale flukes. It covers 21 breeding seasons in the Main Hawaiian Islands, from November 2002 through May 2023. The team worked from 27,698 usable fluke photos of 10,371 individual non-calf whales.
The headline numbers follow from those photos:
- Estimated abundance peaked at 15,067 whales in 2008/09.
- It fell 37%, from 14,736 in 2014/15 to 9,311 in 2021/22.
- Before the heatwave, adult apparent survival was 0.987. It fell to 0.684 across the 2014/15 to 2015/16 interval and recovered to 0.956 afterward.
- Most of the damage came in a single season, a 21.7% drop between 2014/15 and 2015/16. Abundance showed possible slight growth in the final years of the study.
Co-author Shannon Barber-Meyer described the survival drop to Mongabay as a fall from roughly 99% to 68%, and called it unusually sharp. "Apparent survival" is not the same as death, though. The authors point out that their method can't tell a whale that died from one that permanently left the study area. They connect the decline to the Northeast Pacific heatwave and the collapse of the whales' food supply that came with it. They also list other possible explanations their study did not test.
Their view of recovery is cautious. They call the stabilization since then "nascent resilience-in-progress" at most. The population has not returned to its pre-heatwave high, and further recovery depends partly on ocean conditions and prey.
Why NOAA's numbers look so much bigger
The Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary runs out of a building on South Kīhei Road. Its estimates use different figures. In a March 2026 article, the sanctuary puts the Hawaiʻi population at a peak of about 33,000 in 2012, falling to an estimated 26,000 in 2021. NOAA's work draws on vessel surveys, shoreline sightings, fluke identification and acoustic monitoring. The photo-ID paper counts identified non-calf whales in the Main Hawaiian Islands.
The two totals don't match because they come from different methods. They do agree on direction and timing. Both show a peak before the mid-2010s, a sharp loss tied to the heatwave, and a population that hasn't returned to its old high. NOAA describes the heatwave as running from 2014 to 2018. It says sanctuary scientists recorded significantly fewer koholā in the breeding grounds between 2016 and 2018, with some recovery since then. The sanctuary also says plainly that scientists are worried. Marine heatwaves are expected to grow in size and frequency, and that could keep whale populations from fully recovering between events.
What the 2026 shore counts showed for Maui
The volunteer counts offer a more recent view. These are the January, February and March mornings when people stand at beaches and lookouts around the islands. The Sanctuary Ocean Count and Pacific Whale Foundation's Great Whale Count have been held on the same days since 2019. Here are the 2026 counts next to 2025:
| Count | Maui 2025 | Maui 2026 | Statewide 2025 | Statewide 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 702 | 694 | 2,121 | 1,954 |
| February | 802 | 847 | 1,947 | 1,935 |
| March | 307 | 141 | 714 | 436 |
The January 2026 Maui count was eight whales below 2025. February was 45 above, while the statewide total dipped by 12. Maui Now's January story reported that Maui led the state that morning.
March is the month that looks bad, and it comes with a weather caveat. Maui Now's season wrap reported that organizers dealt with poor visibility and cancelled sites because of weather. A March count also comes late in the season, so a stormy morning can cut the total sharply. NOAA's April 2026 season summary lists March at 436 statewide, one more than Maui Now's island-by-island tally of 435, and adds up 4,325 sightings across the three counts.
None of these figures is a census. Organizers warn that the same whale can be logged from two sites or at two different times. The counts are snapshots of what volunteers could see on a given morning. Year over year, through the two clear-weather months, those snapshots from Maui's shoreline barely changed.
Where the counters stand in South Maui
The official count sites are a practical guide to the shoreline. Pacific Whale Foundation's Great Whale Count page lists five Maui stations between North Kīhei and Mākena:
- Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary Visitor Center
- Kihei Surfside Resort
- Pohaku Park
- Polo Beach
- Puu Olai Beach
The visitor center is the one any resident can walk into. It sits on the beach at 726 South Kīhei Road. NOAA's visitor center page says humpbacks may be seen breaching across sanctuary waters from there. The center has exhibits and weekly programs and is open Monday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. It closes on federal holidays, so Veterans Day on November 11 and Thanksgiving on November 26 are days off. The center reopened in January 2023 after a five-year redesign that added the interactive exhibits.
How to be one of the counters this winter
If you'd like a firsthand answer about the whales this year, you can join a count. The 2027 dates are already set:
- Saturday, January 30
- Saturday, February 27
- Saturday, March 27
Each count runs from 8 a.m. to noon, and volunteers have to stay for the full four hours. The Sanctuary Ocean Count lists the same three dates. Registration for Pacific Whale Foundation's Great Whale Count opens December 14, 2026. With both counts on the same mornings, a resident signing up for either one joins the same statewide snapshot that produced the table above.
The other big community date is still open. Pacific Whale Foundation's 45th World Whale Day ran as a week of events in 2026. Its parade went along South Kīhei Road from Kamaole I to Kalama Park on February 15. No 2027 date or format has been posted on the foundation's event pages yet.
The 100-yard rule applies to everyone
Fewer whales in the channel puts more weight on how close people get to the ones that are there. NOAA Fisheries says federal law prohibits approaching humpbacks in Hawaiʻi within 100 yards. That covers boats, kayaks, drones, swimmers and any other approach. This applies to a paddleboard off Keawakapu as much as to a tour boat out of Māʻalaea. This is general information, not legal advice, and NOAA's page is the place to confirm current rules before you head out on the water.
I love this time of year in South Maui, and I'll be watching for the first spout like everyone else. If whale season has you thinking about which stretch of this coastline you'd like to see from your own lanai, or you'd just like to talk Kīhei with a neighbor, reach out to Steve Landin. Every transaction I close sends $500 to a local charity.
