Updated February 08, 2025 at 05:00 AM ET
LAHAINA, Hawaii — It's nearing peak whale-watching season in Hawaii.
On Maui, this means the daily sign of boats darting across the water carrying passengers eager to spot humpback whales. The giant mammals arrive in Hawaii's warm waters between December and March each year to mate and give birth.
"Think: a disco and a daycare," Emma Nelson, 30, a boat captain based in Lahaina, says. She estimates that 10,000 to 15,000 humpback whales come through the waters around Maui each year during whale-watching season.
"It's like Whale Soup out here," Nelson says.
Nelson works for Maui Ocean Adventures, a whale-watching excursion company founded in 2023 by her wife, Chrissy Lovett. Though they have nearly three decades of boat captaining experience between the two of them, this is their first season running their own tours.
"We actually got everything about ready to go two weeks before the Lahaina fires," Nelson recalls. "And, unfortunately, like so many others, we lost everything."
On Aug. 8, 2023, a wildfire sparked by what officials now know were downed power lines swept through the historic town of Lahaina, burning nearly everything to the ground.
When the fire overtook Lahaina Harbor, Nelson, Lovett and their crew were forced to flee into the water and board a vessel, where they could do nothing but watch helplessly as their entire workshop, all their vehicles and three boats became engulfed in flames.
"I would say boats alone were over $700,000 replacement value," Nelson says. "And like a lot of people, we were under-insured because no one expected the harbor to burn down." In all, Lahaina suffered some $5.5 billion in damage, according to the U.S. Fire Administration.
The Maui Police Department says the wildfire also killed more than 100 people.
Lovett, 47, says a year and a half later, the community is still reeling.
"There's the sadness, there's the grief, there's the anger, there's the frustration," she says. "But I'm seeing people move forward."
Including herself.
For 18 months, she and Nelson took every job they could to earn money to rebuild their business from scratch. Last November, they finally saved up enough to buy their first replacement boat, a former sailboat from California. With the help of hours of volunteer labor by community members, they got the new boat — named Macy, in honor of their Golden Retriever — ready to sail by the start of whale-watching season on Dec. 1.
"This boat represents us, and rebuilding and restarting and just redoing," she says. "It's a fresh start for the boat and for us."
But while Maui Ocean Adventures is back on the water, the future is still uncertain. Lovett says they're still in a lot of debt from building up their business and then having to turn around and build it again following the fires. And while tourism, which is the backbone of Lahaina's economy, is not what it was before the fire – it hasn't fully recovered.
Lovett says she doesn't expect them to be in the black anytime soon, but they have been sharing what they do have with the community.
"We save seats every single trip for the fire survivors to help with their healing and their trauma," she explains. "I was traumatized after that experience. I didn't want to get back on a boat and I've been a boat captain for 25 years. And just being on a boat, being with the wildlife, I found that it was definitely like healing."
Since December, Maui Ocean Adventures has given away nearly 200 free seats to fire survivors Lovett says. "It's more fulfilling than any amount of money in the world."
Overall, she says, whale-watching season is going better for them than expected. They're even seeing baby humpback whales during excursions; the newest members of a species whose numbers have rebounded in the last decades.
Proof that comebacks are possible.
The broadcast version of this story was edited by Ravenna Koenig.
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