Hawaii - day 6

Thursday, Dec 16: I got up earlier than everybody else (i.e., before noon) and decided to take a walk around Waikiki.

The waves seemed pretty small, but there were quite a few people surfing out there.

I walked through Kapiolani Park, where I took several pictures of birds. I also came across people jogging and doing other exercise:

After that, I went to the aquarium, but I'll save those photos for the Hawaii day 8 post.

Today's main adventure was Hanauma Bay, and it was probably the most memorable of anything we did in Hawaii.

The bay itself is a former volcanic crater. One side fell into the ocean, and now it's a crescent-shaped bay. The bay has a very shallow, flat area that has been populated by a coral reef. The darker region (the one that looks like an RRT) is reef; the lighter regions are white sand.

You can see the mouth of the bay at the top of this picture (above). While we were waiting to go down, we saw a young whale playing around at the mouth of the bay.

We were waiting because everybody has to watch an informational video about preserving the reef before we could go down to the beach. I'm glad they do that, and I hope that informing visitors is enough to reduce the damage to acceptable levels.

They only show the video at scheduled times, though, so there was a bit more waiting to do. We looked at some posters talking about the reef and the indigenous people. For example:

I didn't dare read the caption, lest it reduce the awesomeness of the picture. I mean, what exactly is going on here? Is the shark pulling the catamaran? Then what are the sail and paddles for? Perhaps they're using the shark like a bloodhound, exploiting its sense of smell to lead them to fish. Or perhaps the shark was just swimming along, minding its own business, and then they lassoed it, just for kicks. We may never know!

On our way down to the beach, there was a sign warning about waves on the ledge

Now, you might think that a single image (panel 2 or 3, for instance) would be enough to convey the danger of "Waves on Ledge", but now you know exactly how it's going to go down. Personally, I think he's eating an ice cream cone (the dot is the ice cream).

Anyways, enough of that!

There's one snorkel shop on the beach that rents equipment. With the monopoly, you'd think they'd charge extravagant prices, but they don't! It's $9 for snorkel, mask, and fins. SC and I even got masks with corrective lenses (which was a big relief, because otherwise I was prepared to unscrew the legs from my glasses in order to fit them inside).

It took a few tries (and lots of salt water up my nose) to get my mask on and breathe properly, but it was fairly intuitive and none of us drowned. I didn't have a problem with fogging, though I hear that's a common complaint. I think my biggest obstacle was suppressing the panic response associated with having water up my nose.

Anyways, it was awesome - there are so many fish! And they're not shy around snorkelers, either. You could swim right up to them (or so it seemed; water's higher index of refraction makes things appear closer) and they just go about their business.

We saw tons of urchins in crevices; I'm told that they bore their way down into the coral. We went out a little bit and came across a small school of needlefish. We joined their school and swam with them for a short distance, then let them go on their way.

The biggest fish we saw was a parrotfish. We followed him for a while and could hear him chomping at the coral! We also saw one cornetfish swimming along the bottom. In another area we saw a moray eel sliding from one crevice to another. There were also a ton of fish that we weren't able to identify or even really keep track of. I'm pretty sure we saw some butterflyfish and stripey fish.

We also saw a sea turtle! I was taking a break to readjust my mask, and heard someone nearby shouting excitedly about something in the water. And there was a turtle! We didn't want to bother the turtle, so we didn't follow, but you could always tell where he was by the crowd of excited people.

Some of the reefs came up pretty close to the surface of the water, but we were able to swim over them without touching them (we were in the water from 4 to 6 pm; low tide was 5:25).

Finally, I had to get out because I was starting to shiver--the water's not uncomfortable, but still colder than I could sustain.

Anyways, we both look forward to going back again. Maybe I can try taking some pictures next time. I'm thinking 50mm f/1.8 lens, polycarb disc glued to cardboard tube, and ziploc bag (hoping the water pressure pushes the bag evenly against the polycarb plate). If it works, it's a feat of DIY engineering regardless of how the pictures turn out, and if it doesn't, it'll fail spectacularly. Win-win.

A few more interesting sights from Hanauma Bay:

The most awesome grass! This was next to the lifeguard tower (where the chickens were eating). It's so short and dense!

We also found that Hanauma Bay is host to a variety of invasive carnivores. Here's an Indian Mongoose rooting through the trash bin. There were three others hanging out with him.

Mongooses were introduced by sugarcane planters to combat rats, but it turns out they don't really prey on rats. Instead, they've destroyed local ground-nesting bird populations, and the successful reintroduction of those endangered species is contingent on eradication of introduced predators.

And a feral cat! So cute! I saw 3 different cats around Hanauma Bay. But they're also extremely destructive to native bird species, and more controversial to eradicate. According to my source, "[the] more socially acceptable methods of cat control have had limited success at reducing predation...so most wildlife professionals...advocate the strict control or elimination of feral cat populations. The most commonly used methods...were trapping and shooting."

This is Koko Crater. We didn't go, but it looks pretty in the sunset!

Walmart foodstuffs for dinner. Everybody tired from snorkeling.