Goose Bumps or Chicken Skin – Does it really matter?

Aloha,

Do you have a favorite Humpback behavior? I do — for some reason watching a Humpback spy-hopping is just mesmerizing to me. Something about watching the whale moving in what seems like a slow-motion vertical elevator ride until her eyes are above the surface of the ocean just gives me goose-bumps (or as we say in Hawaii, “chicken-skin”).

Anyway, guests on our Thursday Wake up with the Whales Cruise got to see not just one, but TWO spy hops from a Humpback who was hanging out with two other Humpbacks about a mile offshore of Anaeho’omalu Bay. While those other two were just surfacing and spouting, over the course of an hour, we watched our first Humpback tail lob 5 times, pec slap 10 times, head lunge 3 times, and then spy hop those two times. This whale also breached just about 50 feet from our idling boat.

Guests on our Late Morning Whale Watch Cruise weren’t nearly as lucky. We caught a couple glimpses of Humpbacks at the surface (including two that surfaced right in front of the boat), but it wasn’t enough for us, so we called it a FLUKE and invited everyone aboard to join us again for FREE!

Mahalo,

Claire

Ocean Sports Whale Fact of the Day: Spy hopping is one of the ways a Humpback can see what’s going on above the surface of the water. Because Humpbacks have really big heads proportionally, their eyes are about a third of the way down their bodies. When the whale spy hops, she rises slowly and vertically from the water, head first. If she’s a fully grown whale, the tip of her rostrum may be 15 feet above the surface before her eyes get there!