Channels of the Hawaiian Islands 7 miles. ʻAlalākeiki means "crying baby." The Kealaikahiki Channel is the channel between Lānaʻi and Kahoʻolawe. It literally means "the road to Tahiti"; if one takes a bearing off of Kealaikahiki Point on Kahoʻolawe while in the channel and heads directly straight, one arrives, more or less, in Tahiti. In practice, however, Polynesian navigators probably did not quite ply a straight route to Tahiti. The channel is 17 miles wide. The ʻAuʻau Channel is one of the most protected areas of ocean in the Hawaiian Islands, lying between Lānaʻi and Maui. The channel is also protected by Molokaʻi to the
Channels of the Hawaiian Islands north, and Kahoʻolawe to the south. The depth of the channel reaches , and its width is . ʻAuʻau channel is a whale-watching center in the Hawaiian Islands. Humpback whales migrate approximately 3,500 miles (5600 km) from Alaskan waters each autumn and spend the northern hemisphere winter months in the protected waters of the channel. ʻAuʻau translates to "to take a bath" referring to its calm bath-like conditions. The middle of the ʻAuʻau channel off Lahaina is known as the Lahaina Roads. Once filled with whalers when Lahaina was a capital for that industry, Lahaina Roads were later adopted as