Honest Signaling

Honest signaling is a term from behavioral biology describing a communication signal that cannot be faked, one that carries real cost to produce and therefore carries real meaning. A full breach is exactly that. Launching forty tons of body entirely out of the water requires an extraordinary expenditure of energy, and whatever a humpback is communicating in that moment, it means it. Here, off the coast of West Maui, water cascades from every surface as this animal makes itself impossible to ignore.