well it's been a couple days since i've written on here so, of course, i have lots to share! i have wed/thurs off so on thursday the other intern, natalie, and i decided to go on a whale watch and it was soooo awesome! we went out on a boat with an organization called the pacific whale foundation. they're a really awesome research group that studies whales and other marine life all over the planet. you can check out all of the cool stuff they're finding out at the link above. anyway, so we went out on a tour with them and about 10 minutes out we spotted our first whale coming up for air! when you think about a humpback whale, you know that they're big, but when all 35-40 feet of them are right next to you it's breathtaking. we had a whale in our sights pretty much for the entire next hour and a half. it was absolutely amazing. one even breached about 20 feet from our boat. i'm sure that was absolutely phenomenal to see, but of course i was at the other side of the boat at the moment and only saw her falling back into the water. i, of course, ran as fast as i could to the other side of the boat and luckily she stayed for a bit to do a couple pectoral fin slaps and a tail slap before disappearing back into the deep. another whale also made quite an appearance by lolling around about 50 feet from our boat half submerged on his back. he did a long series of pectoral fin slaps and about 6 tail slaps in a row before going under (he was up for about 15 minutes playing around!). and in case any of you were wondering there is a very special reason why whales play out of water so much in maui. they spend half of their lives up in the icy but nutrient rich waters of alaska, so when they migrate back down to hawaii they still have a pretty thick layer of blubber and they tend to get pretty hot in our warm waters. luckily, their pectoral fins and tail are covered in thousands of tiny blood vessels so that when they wave them out of water, the cool ocean breeze helps to act as a built in ac unit and cool the whales down. it works out nicely for them and even better for me because we got to see so much amazing whale action that i wasn't even too sad we didn't get to see any green sea turtles or dolphins! besides, hopefully i'll see those next week when i go snorkeling! as a side note, i would also just like to say that when you see those pictures of the beautiful deep blue ocean on the movies, they are totally real in maui! the water here is just so clear and "clean." no wonder the humpbacks come here to mate and to have offspring. well i guess it could also be because their main predators, orcas, aren't here, but still the gorgeous warm water has to have something to do with it!