Читать книгу Ocean Journeys: Beginnings - Brandon Southall - Страница 6

The night was as black as the fresh lava rock. The stars were pinpoints in a flat curtain, their luminance faded by ocean spray and acrid smoke lingering in humid midnight. The heavens slumbered as the moon cowered behind towering Mauna Loa, but the island burst with new life as Madame Pele boiled the sea. The rest of the tropical coast was tranquil, but this southeast rim of Hawai’i was violently active – growing in the night.

We had driven as far out as the road from Pāhoa reached. Near Royal Gardens, the ‘88 flow along Kilauea’s East Rift Zone covered the two-lane highway like a massive serpent, seemingly molded from the asphalt itself. New flows were spilling down the same stretch of Puna coastline three years later, expanding the Big Island. Hawai’i, already double the size of all the other islands combined, continued its birth.

We made a U-turn, dwarfed by the geological dead end, and parked in a long line of vehicles along an overgrown sugarcane field. Our shiny rental car blended with others and stood out from dusty island trucks. Tourists and locals alike had come to see the fire of creation. The paint was melted off one side of an abandoned barn but a tangle of vegetation skirted the cooled outer fingers of lava’s recent reach, charred but dotted with new life. Those arriving before us had chosen to park facing back down the open road.

Volcanic eruptions in the middle of Earth’s tectonic plates, like those creating the Hawaiian Islands, tend to be more gradual and predictable than those on the fringes. Rangers managed the volume of people that come through the reasonably dangerous national park remarkably well without more getting hurt. Still, everyone there that night seemed to realize we were voluntarily entering an active lava field and decided to face their vehicles in the only direction out, just in case.

From the fiery mantle, up through a “hotspot” burning the moving sea floor, lava builds upon layers of past flows. Seventy million years ago, magma first singed frigid water above this spot in the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles from any other land mass, forming islands that incrementally erode back to the sea. As the plate slides to the northwest, lava from the hotspot forms one island at a time, like thick honey squeezed through a frosting spreader onto a staggeringly slow but steady conveyor belt. Each island is built from the deep sea floor until it crests above the waves and begins immediately to be pulled back. From the abyssal foundation, the largest yet of all the Hawaiian Islands began the sustained 18,000 foot climb to the mirrored ceiling and has advanced some 14,000 more feet above sea level. Hawai’i is the largest mountain on the face of the planet, easily taller from the base than Everest and more massive than California’s entire Sierra Nevada range. Twenty miles to the southeast, Lo’ihi percolates below the waves, next in line.

I was fresh in my ocean journeys, and in my own awakening. Life was carefree – the possibilities infinite as dark sands crumbling from the living island. Just twenty, I found myself in the middle of the Pacific rather by accident. I had come to witness an active front in the timeless battle between fire and water. At the outset, jagged rock stands triumphant, but ocean and atmosphere ultimately prevail. Along the Hawaiian chain, as a new island is born, an ancient is reclaimed by pounding surf, scouring streams, and sculpting winds. The crumbling destruction as islands drift from the hotspot is as incremental and remarkable as their fiery creation is dramatic – the conservation of mass stunningly symmetrical.

We labored over the uneven ground, bouncing laser-like flashlight beams in the smoky haze until reaching a make-shift path of crushed volcanic stone. Some of those coming up from witnessing the birth were boisterous, beaming from what they had seen. Others were silent and introspective, as if returning from a sanctuary. Burning trees and sea spray mingled with the intoxicating aroma of tuber roses growing in lush clusters among infant soil. As the flow poured down this cliff a week earlier, random patterns of (hot) fluid dynamics meant life or death – chaos theory with igneous dice.

The path grew steeper, switching down the rugged cliff that had recently been coastal bluff. Despite the profound blackness, the sounds of surf and steam signaled we were drawing nearer to the front. A great struggle for this new edge was underway. Fire pushed aside water and scorched the air.

The intense orange-red hue stopped me in me tracks. Heat waves fluttered like mid-summer asphalt off the pahoe’hoe lava. Smooth and thick as melted caramel, it crawled over itself slowly before disappearing under a ridge above. Smoking trees in the hillside path occasionally exploded, the heat boiling the sap to the point of combustion until a trigger from the bark set it dramatically off. Splattering spurts of lava, flame, and steam flared science-fiction-like into the night sky. Dumbfounded, I realized the magma was flowing through underground tubes directly below me to the new point where it spilled into the sea.

It is obvious why native Hawaiians revered the volcano’s creative and destructive powers, each gorgeous and frighteningly incomprehensible. Air pockets, lava tubes, and fissures between flows are inherent weak points that fail over geological time, creating regular earthquakes and rare, though massive tsunami. For the island and its myriad ecosystems, these processes are normal and essential.

We dropped onto two-day-old rock and headed out to the conflict. The glowing ridge faded and the night became again as black as Kentucky coal. Our senses soon became intoxicated with the ocean heartbeat pulsing rhythmically ashore to face still-hot earth.

This newest excursion of the Big Island hissed fierce warnings with each rushing wave and glared ember eyes over receding water shrouded in steam. The battle raged progressively into the oceanic realm, the ancient metronome of advance and retreat mirrored on an unintelligible scale by the entire Hawaiian chain. Fledgling terra firma was announced to the heavens with a thousand-foot column of swirling steam and smoke. Subtle explosions shuddered on the sea surface as lava from underwater tubes entered the frigid aquatic realm, creating a haunting, intermittent glow along the advancing shore.

Night melted like paint down the side of the abandoned sugarcane barn, revealing a soft gray dawn as a towering pillar of steam and smoke intertwined with clouds swirled by the trades. The sea continued its steady assault on the fresh edge. The continuing spectacle was less dramatic in daylight, but dawn revealed a hundred yards of new coastline to those fortunate enough to see the night through.

~~~

I saw as much of the ocean around the growing island as I could manage with no money and no boat. I was on an exchange from the University of Montana to the University of Hawai’i, Hilo. I would like to say I was there because I anticipated that my time on the island would be pivotal in my career, coaxing me from freshwater ecology to the ocean journeys that would define my life. That was the ultimate outcome, but the real reason I went was because of a girl.

Elizabeth and I met at the University of Tulsa and transferred together to Missoula. After two years on the dusty plains of “tornado alley,” I fell in love with the mountains, as I had with her. Western Montana is one of the most remarkable, wild places I’ve ever been. I would spend the rest of my life there, were it on the ocean. I didn’t want to leave those gorgeous peaks, fluffy powder, and trout-heavy streams, even to go to Hawai’i. But she wanted to see the world, which I could understand having spent some time in her home town of Batesville, Arkansas. I was young and didn’t require that much coaxing, so I tagged along and it changed my life. After a few weeks of hitchhiking to the sea, we acquired our own vehicle one interesting day near Hāpuna State Beach on the leeward western coast of the Big Island.

We were climbing over mounded lava rocks, blistering hot even at mid-morning. Seeking a private cove someone at a produce stand told us about, we ignored large signs that said “Keep Out.” Our advance was shortly interrupted by the nearby sound of shattering glass.

Startled, I called out, “H-h-hello?”

“Oh, man! I thought you were some ferrets, man!” came a surfer response, seasoned with a hillbilly twang. We noticed a little hut poking out of the sharp rocks 75 feet from us that we hadn’t seen before.

“No. We’re…just…new here,” I said, slightly concerned. “We were just looking for a beach somebody told us about.”

“Man, the rich dude that owns that place pays me to sit down here on weekends and keep people off his spot. Its bullshit considering he never goes there, but that’s my job. Want a drink?”

We hesitated, but not having anywhere in particular to go now that our secluded beach plans had been shattered, we joined him. He said his name was something plain like Brad or Ben that I don’t remember, but his nickname “Grant” stuck with me.

“One time we were fishin’ and I dropped 50 beers in 24 hours so my buddies started calling me that after that dude on the money,” he explained, his earrings dangling in unison with the giant wad of keys hooked on his cut-off jeans. He fumbled through a tattered cooler full of lukewarm water and handed us several cans of light beer.

“Dude also pays me to shoot the ferrets and feral cats that come over on his land from the…state…beach,” he said, coughing out smoke. “I get three bucks for each cat and five for a ferret. I never actually pull the trigger unless I’m pretty sure of what I’m shooting at. That’s why I chuck bottles first – to flush ‘em out so’s I can see ‘em.”

While his firearm safety procedures seemed reasonably sound, I made a mental note to pay more attention to “Keep Out” signs in unfamiliar places.

We told him our story and listened wide-eyed to his sordid tales of shark attacks and bar-room knife fights. Even scaled down to account for the beer they were pretty impressive. He backed one of them up by waving a 9-inch blade around for effect. We tried to change the subject and asked him about the island. He turned out to be a really nice, if completely unambitious, guy who told us about the local places and even made some notes with crayons on a McDonald’s napkin.

He offered to sell us one his beater trucks for a hundred dollars, but said I’d have to drive us in one of the other ones to get it because he was too loaded. I agreed. The three of us piled into a shabby little compact pickup that was about five feet tall with rusted-out holes in the bed wide enough that you could see the drive shaft turn when you were moving. Elizabeth and I exchanged half-smiles as she straddled the rickety stick shift, non-verbally acknowledging the realization that this was the vehicle he intended to keep.

After buying him a mounded platter of shredded pork, rice, and fried eggs smothered in gravy, he took us to his favorite locals bar. Being white and new to the island, this kind of place was generally advisable to avoid. But you never really see a new place unless you make it into a few dives and everybody there knew him well so we were fine. Four rounds of shots for Grant, the bartender, and a pirate-looking friend later, we had more than half paid for our new ride before we ever saw it.

We finally got him to walk across the road to show us the truck. Somehow, it was even smaller than the other one and the holes in the bed were even more gaping. It fired right up, though, and had a peppy little personality. We figured we might as well keep it, considering there was no way we were getting back the money we had already spent. We quickly named it “Tonka” because it was so toy-like and pretended that it spoke in low-pitched Asian grumblings. He gave us the key and tried to sign the title over to me in crayon. I dug a pen out from under the front seat amongst spent .22 casings. We completed the transaction and walked back across the road to finish paying the thing off.

As we left the bar later that afternoon we contemplated going back down to the private beach, knowing it would be unguarded, but decided to stretch Tonka’s legs back to Hilo. He shook vigorously whenever you accelerated and really didn’t like anything more than a gradual incline. Braking was generally questionable, to the point where we actually discussed which ditch to bail into on several occasions. He was pretty smooth between about 30 and 40 mph, unless it was raining, which was often on the windward side, but he never crashed or failed to start.

Soon after our indoctrination to the rougher edges of Hawaiian lifestyle, Elizabeth and I began exploring the Big Island in earnest. Those were some of the happiest times of my young life – times that would become impossible to forget later no matter how hard I tried. Tonka took us 3,000 miles around the Big Island before we ultimately parted with him, a fan, and two pillows for thirty bucks and a ride to the airport. The only difference was that Tonka’s new owner paid us in cash.

~~~

We bumped south from Hilo to Kehena, as breaks in the dense vegetation afforded distant views of the steam and smoke marking new land along the volatile coast. The last active flows along this northern edge of Kilauea’s East Rift Zone were in the mid-50’s and the vegetation had a decidedly mature sense. A narrow, two-lane road hugged the verge between sloping jungles rolling down from the Pu’u Kali’u lookout to two hundred foot cliffs at the ocean’s doorstep.

After bouncing over its knobby roots, Tonka shuddered to a standstill beneath an expansive banyan tree. We were still buzzing and sweaty from the vibrations of the ride and hot wind. Soon we were pleasantly soaked as heavy drops from the most recent rain leaked through epiphytic plants living parasitically along the far-reaching, hundred-year-old branches.

As we stepped out from under the banyan into bright sunshine it was as if night had been lifted. Tonka was in like company with other vehicles clustered around a tiny trailhead. The ocean below was as profoundly blue as I had ever seen so close to land, though it would be rivaled by subsequent journeys to the Kona coast and a hint of the Mediterranean. The edge fell straight to the water and hot air shot up with such regular force it felt as if you could balance your entire weight above the perilous drop. Spots of life flickered on ledges along the sheer face; a small mountain apple tree clung improbably to the cliff, an ancient remnant of the early Polynesian settlers.

The narrow trail wound down the steep face ending in a warm tide pool. We waded across, towels on our heads, to a narrow strip of coarse black sand bunched against the mighty backdrop. We hung our things on the low branches of a tree whose trunk angled out from the base of the vertical black wall. Its roots were laced in crevices of the monolith’s foundation, appearing to squeeze life-sustaining nutrients directly from the slab. Cool water, pulled from damp tropical breezes by the sudden vertical excursion of rock, trickled steadily down the cliff, painting it with streaks of green life, before melting into the sand.

I quickly noticed that the other people on the beach were scantily, if at all, clad. I had never been to a nude beach before and found it somewhat odd and uncomfortable. Having an unexpected conversation with one of my hippie professors while wearing nothing but swim fins (and he nothing more than a straw hat, a talking parrot on his shoulder, and a joint in his mouth) contributed to the strangeness of the experience. My initial misgivings about the merits of swimming au naturel quickly ended once I entered the water.

It was colder here than other edges of the island and my skin came alive in the embrace. Having nothing between my body and the water was an extreme, liberating sensation. I had underestimated the extent to which the absence of swim trunks could enhance the experience of water. I could feel the strong undertow tugging me down the steep shore, sucking my feet into the black sand with each receding wave as I adjusted my mask and fins. The sky was filled with swirling dark clouds. It began to rain.

One of the most remarkable aspects of snorkeling or diving is that first moment of semi-shock when you push off and take flight. In the hundreds of dives I have made thus far, I have never failed to feel exhilarated at the very outset. Senses tingle as you adjust to an entirely new tactile perspective. You go from looking down on the water or just splashing around in it to feeling thoroughly engaged. Sounds are almost entirely muffled and you mainly hear your own heavy breathing, which at first seems as odd as a recording of your own voice. The water is all-encompassing and you breathe without loosing its vantage and wonderfully dense, surging support. It is an almost out-of-body, space-walking sort of encounter.

Piercing rain peppered my shoulders. The dim conditions limited the corals visible among black rocks. There were the expected tropical fish in widely-scattered clusters – Moorish idols, spectacled parrot fish, puffers, and the ubiquitous little sergeant majors I’ve seen in abundance on every shore of the four Hawaiian Islands I’ve dived. Within the small bay leading up to the nude beach, however, there were no big coral formations or established reefs of the sort that attract hordes of fish and larger predators. Because that part of the island was still expanding, the fringing reefs were quite young. The corals there were just the seeds of future reefs that won’t be fully realized for a thousand years, depending, of course, on how they respond to climate change, ocean acidification, marine debris and other global and local stressors continuing to threaten the existence of coral reefs.

I snorkeled along in the damp, dim visibility observing what pockets of life I could find and trying not to get pulled out to sea. I noticed a shimmering dissonance in the water like the heat mirage above burning lava fields. For a moment, I was certain the rising water was scalding hot, and that somehow this stretch of the East Rift Zone was about to open up again after 40 years of inactivity. Then I noticed little fish darting through the wobbling column. I approached cautiously. The water rising from the sand was freezing cold.

In one of those ‘ah-ha’ moments, I realized that the water I had seen disappearing into the black sand actually went somewhere. It filtered down from streams feeding off the cliff and eventually bubbled out of the island back into the ocean. I held onto the bottom and pulled myself in for a closer look. Like the discharge of an under-gravel filter in a fish tank, little jets of water flowed out of tiny holes in the rock and sand. I spit out my snorkel and sampled a little. The ancient Hawaiians knew these springs intimately and would dive through salt water with large vases to collect containers of fresh water. I drank copiously, amazed by how pure it was considering I was in the ocean.

After swimming in and out of the fresh water column, feeling the radical changes in temperature between the spring and surrounding water, I drifted back out into the mouth of the little bay to look for some larger and different fish. I was soon rewarded with a very different aquatic interaction.

The bottom drifted further from me and blurred to dark grayish-blue amidst the fuzzy specter of lava rocks. I began to hear clicks, squeaks, and squeals, seemingly from all directions. I scanned the area, but the visibility was limited to some 50 feet – poor by Hawai’i standards, though a range I would later find to be a rare treat in northern California. As the racket approached, fish moved into shallower water and I looked toward the ocean. A large pod of dark, sleek rockets of energy were splashing and twirling straight toward me – spinner dolphins!

These little fireballs are perhaps the most energetic animals on Earth. Aptly named for their aerial acrobatics, these marine mammals (part of a group called “cetaceans” that includes porpoises and whales) flip and spin for hours. They feed offshore at night and rest in the morning and mid-day, but in the afternoon they tend to put on a show. No one knows exactly why they do it, though suggestions have included ridding themselves of parasites, advertising their strength to potential mates, communicating with one another, or simply having fun.

I don’t think that even the most rigid scientist could have denied the fact that the slick spinners seemed to enjoy themselves. They raced in furiously, buzzing and clicking in investigation and intimidation before banking off with an amazing grace and power, flashing their white bellies. I was literally about as defenseless as one could be, stunned by their absolute command of movement in water. I tried to float as calmly as possible with two-hundred pound bullets screaming by in all directions. They soon ignored me and set into a furious display as naked people on the beach applauded each spinning cart-wheel.

A juvenile cleared the water and did a full rotation, aiming the tip of his rounded rostrum toward the spitting clouds. Several slightly larger animals spun next, in near tandem, and easily finished two full spins with a half-twist before landing on their sides with a splash. Soon there were four at a time, then seven, and at the climax of the festivities more than ten spinners twirled in the air, churning the Bay like a break-away water polo match. Some of the animals seemed to reach twice their meager five foot lengths above the water. Two to three complete spins or rotations were most common, and they tended to spin at about a twenty degree angle to the surface of the water. Two young adults broke out with four full spins, one following the other. I bobbed in the middle of it, ‘ooh-ing’ and ‘aah-ing’ at the best natural fireworks display of my life.

After an hour and a half, the animals took turns racing across the bay, skimming the surface of the water like kids on a frozen pond. There were a final few isolated spins as the pod slowly pulled back out of the bay into deeper water with the gathering darkness. I heard whistles and squeaks as the pod reformed, some of which seemed to be repeated with emphasis toward the last few juveniles intent on getting in a final spin.

I resisted the urge to try and pursue them as they headed back into deeper water. Once the display ended and the last of the amazing animals were gone, I realized I was exhausted, freezing, and completely pruned from being in the water for three hours. I held my mask in front of me as I slogged across the mostly empty beach.

We bounced out from profound darkness beneath the banyan tree. I could see the moon lighting the walls of a cloud bank billowing up this windward-facing volcano slope. The opaque feature churned and twisted as it rolled up the mountain, black on the bottom but brilliant white on the moonlit side. Mirroring this contrast on the ocean were spotlight patches interspersed with utter voids.

I thought about the spinner pod as Tonka chugged up the east flank of Mauna Kea past MacKensie into the quintessential tin-roof Hawaiian town of Poho’iki, devoid of artificial light and advertisements. Fat drops dripped from mulberry trees onto the narrow road. I imagined the dolphins circling one of the brightly lit zones offshore, lurking in surrounding shadows as the fish they were stalking used the light to find their own prey, waiting, and then shooting into the moonlight in dashing ambush pairs. I wondered whether they twisted and twirled as passionately in the moonlight.

Turning inland, I wrestled Tonka up a steep hill through papaya orchards. Their sweet scent belied their presence in a heavy warm mist that seemed to emanate from geothermal power above the steaming ridge. A probe through rock there touched 500° down below, hinting at its immense potential. Like every alternative form of energy, geothermal power has limitations, one being its location, specific availability and that that the infrastructure is not in place for it to be widely cost-effective or widely distributed. Yet in the face of carbon-dioxide-driven global warming, poisonous smog, trillion-dollar oil profits, and war after war over the black stuff, one begins to wonder how long we will continue to accept such tired reasons for not more emphatically expanding the many proven sources of alternative power.

My interest in environmental science and conservation had been peaked by a few early experiences, but remained rudimentary and immature. Before Hawai’i, I had begun to work on conservation at the University of Tulsa, where Elizabeth and I formed a grassroots conservation group. I switched from engineering to biology and became environmental editor for the school paper. But my blunt perspectives were poorly received in the conservative Midwest. I wrote a piece about how development of alternative fuels following the 1970s energy crisis would have rendered the first Gulf War unnecessary. The president of the University (coincidentally heavily endowed by U.S. and foreign oil barons) ordered me to write a retraction or face “terminal disciplinary action.” I refused and nothing happened, but it was a sign that I would require a different path.

I found others with a sense of awe for nature in Missoula, although parts of Montana share a defiant resistance to responsible stewardship. I began studying conservation biology and freshwater ecology and spent time writing in the Rattlesnake, fishing the enchanted Bitterroot, and backpacking in the Mission Mountains. I fell in love with the natural world, determined to do something significant, enact some change, and inspire others. I was young and idealistic, without regard for practicality or snails-pace progress. Life taught me to tuck this irreverence away and draw on it sparingly, but to also never forget it. So too was I unfocused in science, life, and love - driven by idealized, unrealistic expectations. But the raw biological beauty and striking, infective Hawaiian culture surrounding me began to hone my focus.

We puttered through the misty orchid farms of Pāhoa and chugged up another hill to Kea’au. Past expansive macadamia fields and the sequentially blooming rare tropical flowers of the “forever beautiful” gardens, a funnel-shaped bay emerged in the lusciously fragrant evening air. A dim yellow glow rose from the sleepy, historic settlement that hugged that elbow of ocean, nestled between rugged Leleiwi Point and the deeply cut east flanks of massive Mauna Kea.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hilo Town had an aura of diversity – a disparate blend of people, ecosystems, and eras. Weaving down the rolling toes of the dormant volcano to where they dip into the broad bay, the towns’ essence changed as frequently as the oscillating sun and rain. Theologies, ideologies, and the buildings themselves seemed to come in equal proportions from the booms of the 1890s, 1920s, and 1950s. The southernmost U.S. city and one of the wettest places in the world, Hilo didn’t seem like the largest settlement on the Big Island or the county seat. Mostly spared the sprawling, soulless resorts on O’ahu, Maui, and the leeward Kona-Kailua coast, Hilo retained a traditional dignity. It was my home there and the most distinct of the dozen places I have lived. Some dislike Hilo because there’s “little to do” and a damp sense of stagnated development, but that, and its rich natural and human history, was why I loved it.

Like most of Hawai’i, Hilo has a stop-and-start story. People inhabited the bay for a thousand years before traditional life was forever changed by western influences. Equidistant from the northern and southern ends of the island and with ample river and ocean access, Hilo evolved as a natural center of commerce. Natives from the south brought cloth and dried fish to trade along the banks of the Wailuku River. The people of Hilo, Hamakua, and areas to the north brought hogs, fresh fish, and taro root. Traders shouted prices from one bank to another, negotiating until a trade was agreed upon and enacted cautiously since sour deals usually resulted in violent disagreement.

Captain James Cook put the islands on nautical charts in 1778 and greed found its way from around the Pacific Rim. Presuming that life was perfectly balanced and tranquil before the arrival of evil white men set into motion the incremental decimation of culture and the environment is an oversimplification of how and why changes occurred. It is fair to say that once outside influences arrived, no aspect of Polynesian-rooted Hawaiian culture was unaffected. Fur traders, whalers, sandalwood foresters, pirates, and other profiteers came in increasing abundance. In response to these new pressures, and because of his own quest for power, King Kamehameha the Great soon united the Hawaiian Islands into a single kingdom. These changes and the introduction of new agriculture irrevocably altered Hawaiian life and culture. But the days of the new monarchy were numbered.

Missionaries founded several Hilo churches in the 1820s; abandoning their parent’s inspirations to spread Christianity, the children of the first Hawaiian missionaries chose rather to profit from the vast new opportunities. They took over politics and commerce, buying land at a torrid pace. Non-natives soon owned most property and began developing it for a powerful crop to be cultivated by new immigrants.

Sugar had a slow start but exploded in the late 1880s, with the influx of European heavy fertilization and other agricultural techniques. Native Hawaiians were largely excluded from the industry, which was serviced by successive waves of workers from China, Portugal, Japan, Puerto Rico, Korea, and the Philippines; their descendants now form the amazing diversity in Hilo and the rest of the islands.

The growing power of agri-business culminated in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893. The “Big Five” planters (including Sanford Dole who later formed Dole Pineapple and became governor) aided by U.S. Marines, forced the surrender of Queen Liluokalani. The Islands were annexed and in 1900 became a U.S. territory geared to favor agricultural interests with little regard for conservation of natural or cultural resources. Hilo grew steadily as a trading center as the sugar boom peaked in the late 1920s; soon, a more lasting industry took off.

Tourism began in the early 20^th century, first by boat and later by air. A steamship trip took 4½ days from San Francisco and brought increasing numbers of rich Americans. The era of modern tourism began in 1936 once visitors could fly to Hawai’i from California in just under a day. World War II dealt a blow to tourism in Hilo, as martial law was declared throughout the islands, but by 1959, the year Hawai’i became the 50^th U.S. state, commercial jets were arriving with hundreds of thousands of tourists. Fueled by rich Japanese visitors, tourism flourished in the 1980’s with several millions of visitors per year. By the time I arrived, tourism was leveling off or even declining, a trend exacerbated by the tragic events of September 11, 2001. While Hilo isn’t built on resorts, these losses, and the utter collapse of the sugar industry, hit hard. But recent economic challenges are just the latest facing this quiet town.

The ocean has brought other, more sudden, hardships. Guided into the town by funnel-shaped Hilo Bay, powerful 20^th century tsunami overwhelmed a meager breakwater constructed after earlier destructive events. A 35-foot wall of water caused by a powerful Alaskan earthquake slammed into Hilo in 1946, killing over 150 people. She was rebuilt following the devastation with an influx of American investments ahead of imminent Hawaiian state-hood. An early warning system was developed, but people ignored the blaring sirens in May of 1960 as another large tsunami, this one triggered by a massive quake off Chile, hit Hilo killing more than fifty. Following this tragedy, immediate waterfront areas were not redeveloped but rather transformed into a series of beautiful memorials and parks.

Much of Hawaiian history before and after western contact includes the conflicts of greed and war that define of our species. But in many regards, Hawaiian culture respected and revered its intertwined destiny with the natural world, especially the mighty ocean. Strict laws (or ‘kapu’) traditionally forbade over-fishing, and relatively advanced conservation and harvesting practices, such as restricted fishing seasons, were employed. Slash-and-burn deforestation did traditionally occur in some areas, but cultivation of plants was a highly advanced and central aspect of life for many ancient Hawaiians. It is the lack of such recognition, rooted in a profound connection between the labor of providing one’s own sustenance and the land or sea itself, which allows “advanced” civilization to continue blindly poisoning and plundering the very resources upon which we depend.

In Hawai’i, I was searching for direction without realizing it – drifting, devoid of coherent guiding principles other than faith and a growing but general, environmental purpose. I didn’t expect a recalibration of my path. There were inevitable growing pains, including decisions that would irrevocably alter my relationship with Elizabeth. Central to my personal awakening was experiencing the oceans’ beauty and, consequently, an outside appreciation of the intertwined Hawaiian history, culture and nature. Through various fortunate and seemingly unconnected events, I began to relate the sea deeply and inexplicably.

~~~

The day we had arrived in Hawai’i, our local hosts invited us and the other exchange students to a traditional lua’u on Coconut Island, one of the reconstructed parks along the sea walk near downtown Hilo. It alternated rain and dripping sunshine as we dropped down from the campus to the water. The sweet, tropical aroma of flowers and fruit drenched the air, as heavily as the intermittent showers. Perhaps more than any other characteristic of above-water Hawai’i, intense fragrances are the most enchanting and visceral.

The van wound down Banyan Drive, a famous waterfront passage lined with broad-reaching trees planted by celebrities ranging from Babe Ruth to Amelia Aerhart and Franklin Roosevelt. The banyans were proud sentries, standing boldly as a reminder that they could withstand a mighty rush of water whereas buildings could not. Lining the bay that has brought both prosperity and hardship to Hilo, these trees, with their interlaced sinews, symbolized the resilience and diversity of its people.

A footbridge led to tiny Coconut Island. We arrived an hour before sunset as streaks of orange-red bent across the gentle sky as if beamed from the pinnacle of Mauna Kea. Deep cuts in her flanks were evident to the north, where wind and water had eroded lush valleys in relatively old rock of this dormant side of the shield volcano; we forgot the comfortable sense of the sunset as soon as they began serving food.

I had eaten tropical fruit before, but the freshness of the pineapples, passion fruit, mangoes, and breadfruit was remarkable. They served fresh guava juice, fat little popoulu bananas that reminded me of Cuban plantains, and juicy pentamorous, pear-tasting gems called star fruit. A teenage boy sliced fresh coconuts with a huge machete. Each was served with a straw so you could drink the milk through a small hole before the husk was peeled away and the nut crushed for the decadent meat. When the bonfire glinted in his blade rather than the red glare of the sunset we ran out of coconuts, but someone simply knocked a few out of a nearby tree. As much as I enjoyed the fruits, the various starch dishes (poi, sticky white rice, and salted sweet potatoes) were not to my taste. But I noticed that our hosts took copious quantities of these and loaded them up with gravy, so I took a little more of each.

I needed no such excuses when it came to the meat. They had roasted an entire pig in the ground, wrapped in banana leaves and cooked for a day until the meat fell from the bone into the dipping sauce of melted fat and sea salt. I’ve always been partial to pulled pork, but this buried swine took the cake. It was one of the most tender and memorable forms of barbequed meat I have ever eaten, which is saying a lot given the considerable exposure I have had in west Texas, Memphis, Kansas City, and Carolina.

Almost nothing could have topped that carnivorous experience, but the tastes of the sea gave it a run. There were a dozen different seafood dishes – boiled octopus, blackened grouper, raw silver perch from the lee side, and piles of little reef fish fried whole and stacked like thickly salted potato chips. But the highlight of the evening came at sunset.

Two native Hawaiians pulled their boat onto the sand and carried a cooler over to the fish table. They lifted two bonito tuna, each about three feet long, onto a long wooden board. They clipped the gills and let the blood drain into a glass bowl with soy sauce, sake, and wasabi paste. They masterfully removed the dorsal fins with long, narrow cuts. The impossibly tender, rich red sashimi was served as silver-dollar-sized morsels with the sauce, more wasabi, gari, and fresh pineapple.

I have never enjoyed such a fresh and delicious blending of tastes and textures. It was a remarkable introduction to Hilo Bay and Hawaiian culture, and a harbinger of remarkable things to come.

~~~

I did actually attend classes while in Hilo as an exchange student. Most memorable was simultaneously taking a graduate-level ichthyology course and an interactive cultural studies class called “Hawaiian Ethnozoology.” The former was an analysis of functional anatomy and evolutionary history in the >25,000 species of fish, with particular emphasis on the thousand or so found in the islands. The later was a unique interpretation of the varied ways in which marine life was integral to traditional society taught by a flamboyant native Hawaiian.

Similar subjects were often discussed in both classes with sometimes-complimentary, sometimes-contrasting viewpoints from scientific and socio-cultural perspectives. It was my initial introduction to the apparent conflict between reason and faith, between intellectual objectivity and human nature, and between theory and practicality. Some of the reasons why science has become marginalized in society, in part because of religion, became clearer to me, though the barriers between them began to seem less real.

The marine science curriculum steadily steered me toward the study of the ocean, but I tried to get off campus to the water as often as I could manage to actually see and live it. Most weekends, we would drag grumbling Tonka out for day trips on the eastern half of the island or to camp somewhere on the lee side. But I couldn’t go five full days on the Big Island without getting in that water, and so found a few local spots I could get to before, between, or occasionally instead of class.

Just a few miles from town, outside Blonde Reef and the breakwater that forms the eastern rim of Hilo Bay, is an under-appreciated beach called Onekāhakaha. I rarely saw anyone other than local kids boogie-boarding in the dozens of times I was there. After loosing some diving gear once while spear-fishing, I concluded it was wise to bring nothing but a towel and flip-flops. Hawaiian beaches can have their share of petty thieves, particularly the sort of out-of-the-way spots I prefer. One advantage of having a beater truck was the lack of concern about it being stripped while in the water.

Most of the times I clunked trusty Tonka down to the county park, I snorkeled alone, leaving him in the shade of Polynesian palms at the end of a half-paved road. Pine needles intermingled oddly with palm fronds on the path next to a surf shop with an old, blind bulldog that was fatter than he was long. The old asphalt morphed to packed dirt, sandier and looser by the step. The sea appeared level over a small dune held together with thin shrubs covered with light pink flowers that looked as if they had been cut in half. Warm red hibiscus flowers with vivid yellow stamen trumpeted toward the sun rising over the water, following it throughout the day and blaring toward the volcanoes at sunset.

Part of why the windward side of the Big Island is not known for its diving is that strong waves and currents, as well as sediments flowing from the rain-soaked land, make for murkier conditions than along the Kona and Kohala coasts. Also, the stronger windward surf and lack of well-developed offshore reefs, means fewer corals and less diverse life than the crystal water and brilliant aquatic scenes on the lee side.

While lacking such striking beauty, for an every-day dive it was hard to complain about Onekāhakaha. The sky would often gray and spit rain, dimming the visibility and color of the fish and corals. But sometimes the waves would lie down and the sun would turn reef fingers reaching off Kēōkea point into sparkling aquaria. One of these bright mornings, I had an amazing dive with a friend from the Marshall Islands.

We arrived before dawn, quietly drinking Kona coffee and eating fresh pineapple at a picnic table. Hilo sunrises are every bit as phenomenal as Kona sunsets, escorted in with the damp, fresh scent of tropical flowers. A few locals slept on the beach amidst beer cans and a still-smoldering campfire. It was a cool, crisp fall morning on the Big Island (i.e., it was 70 degrees and hadn’t rained in 12 hours). A gentle breeze nudged curiously off the island, urging us into the still water.

We finished our breakfast and checked our minimal gear; I had a bathing suit, fins, a mask, rash guard, enough weight to stay slightly negatively buoyant, a backpack tank, and a breathing regulator. With no 7mm wetsuit, hood, buoyancy control vest, or elaborate safety plan, it was truly a different experience than diving frigid northern California. The tide was up which, though a difference of just a foot or two, made it easier to get in with scuba gear on. This was the given justification for our getting up so early to dive.

The more compelling reason was the sensual pleasure of being in the water as pink streaks graced the sky. There is too much beauty in the world, too many gifts, to sit by idly sleeping, drinking, working, or pretending to witness life through a monitor. You have to engage it where it calls you – water, forest, mountain, or sky – as often as you can, force frenetic distractions aside, see the world, and bring the passion.

I pushed off from a jagged ledge into the rising sun. The cool morning water momentarily took my breath away as I clawed over near-shore rocks through two feet of murky water. Settling into the scene, I found my way into a channel of light sand leading out between two long, dark fingers. I rode the slight surge out with each wave that forged up each side and sucked back down the soft middle. Outside the wave-break, the bottom sloped gradually. Rounded black lava rocks poked through the shifting pale-tan sand like desert tortoises.

There is more life to see than it might seem in this transient zone. A fat, nine-inch sea cucumber (called a “loli”) rolled around in a little basin with some leaves and other detritus. If sufficiently stressed, these tightly rolled sausage-like animals (which look like plump worms, but are actually closely related to sea stars and urchins) will literally spill their guts. “Evisceration” is a defense mechanism to placate a harassing predator with something to eat other than the entire animal. Amazingly, sea cucumbers can recover from spilling their stomach contents and portions of their innards, much like other echinoderms can regenerate an appendage. Children sometimes forcibly eviscerate them at one another in a macabre, juvenile game certainly not enjoyed by the animals.

I lifted this one gently. It was black, but with subtle, fluorescent blue streaks lining each of its five distinct sections. Tiny tube feet along its length moved particles around, directing them to the mouth at the forward end, which was difficult to distinguish from the rear. The little cuke squirmed in my hand before scrunching into a defensive position. These nocturnal animals are important to many near-shore environments, consuming and transforming organic matter. I picked a cigarette butt out of the swirling aggregation of leaves and twigs and laid the rounded animal back down. After a few seconds it relaxed, stretching out like a collapsed straw wrapper hit by a drop of water.

Tiny bubbles dribbled up from the sand, hinting at submerged life beneath. Bandtailed goatfish, burrowing gobies, and blennies skimmed the bottom cryptically, popping about but darting for cover. I noticed a pair of light brown fish with pointed snouts and subtle blue speckles shoot away from me in tandem. They were whitespotted tobies, finger-length bottom feeders endemic to Hawai’i, but uncommon. I never saw another pair except for that brief, early morning encounter.

The coloration of most life on these shallow flats is pale, matching the uniform soft-beige of the shifting sand. These animals do not have the luxury of being one of many targets among a colorful crowd like their nearby relatives on coral heads. They must evade the occasional tang, puffer, or trigger cruising by, looking for an easy target against the stark backdrop with nowhere to hide. Cryptic coloration and behavior, as well as small body size, are their adaptations to survive in this challenging environment. There is much more to the seemingly barren sandy areas inside reefs than initially meets the eye, whether on the windward side of the Big Island, the Florida Keys, or Bahamian shoals and flats.

I drifted further out between massive rock extrusions, effluent lava tubes that Mauna Kea emptied to the sea before humans arrived. Reef sounds surrounded me; snapping shrimp, glumping groupers, and the omniscient crunching parrotfish formed the natural symphony, blissfully pulsing in an offbeat manner occasionally synched with steady waves.

Tortoise-shell rocks increased in size and frequency as I approached the reef. So too did the prevalence of black sand and the number of easily visible fish. The sergeant majors appeared first, followed by “convict” tangs (named for the vertical jail-like bars on their sides), and several spotted puffers. Puffers aren’t the most hydrodynamic fish in the sea, having roughly the dimensions of a shoe box. But look at an “o’opu” against a background of peppered sand and you’ll appreciate one reason why they persist.

A school of small triggerfish glided toward me as I reached the first cauliflower coral heads and algae-covered boulders of the shallow reef zone. They were jet black, with iridescent white trim running down the co-joined dorsal and anal fins on the top and bottom of their bodies. They use these long fins to propel themselves with seemingly awkward yet remarkably effective “ballistiform” propulsion rather than thrusting with the tail. When in danger, these feisty fish deploy a small, powerful spine on top of their head (the “trigger”) to powerfully anchor themselves into crevices of the reef.

A ridiculously skinny, cigar-shaped, yellow trumpet fish (called a “nünü”) cruised past me without seeming to move a fin. I almost didn’t notice it an inch below the surface, hugging the wavering mirrored ceiling. From the side it looked like a drifting two-foot stick – from the front it was nearly invisible. These are one of those species, like flying squirrels, aye-ayes, or komodo dragons that seem more like cartoons than real animals. But nature finds unique, sometimes extreme solutions to the varied challenges of a harsh and changing world.

It was a little murky, so I headed down the reef. A loosely organized group of gray unicorn tangs scooted away. Their namesake forehead nubs seemed almost as humorous as their wide-eyed frowns and puffed-out lower lips as they flicked their tiny pectoral fins. A straggler grabbed a last bite of leafy brown algae before grumpily crossing my path, flashing a blue bar on the narrow caudal peduncle connecting his tail and body.

Moving from just five to ten feet of water, the character of the reef changed dramatically. Green and yellow cauliflower corals became broader, forming hemispherical colonies with symmetrical folded branches. Beige and green lobe corals anchored to the spine of the ridge grew in expansive plates and mounded lobes. This “reef bench” zone was where the highest densities of corals grew, though slowly even in this optimal regime. Chaotic interactions of biologic, geologic, and hydrodynamic forces transformed transient arches, crevices, and walls into ecosystems for countless fish, invertebrates, and plants.

Red slate pencil urchins with broad, rounded spines poked out conspicuously like flat sidewalk chalk. Related but distinct, black and purple spiny boring urchins were tucked into holes they had scoured from the reef. At first glance, they seemed static armored vestibules. But on closer inspection their many appendages moved freely, with a complex purpose remarkable for such seemingly simple animals.

A long-nosed butterflyfish cautiously poked its needled snout between two fat coral lobes. I hovered, finger tips on exposed rock to avoid damaging the reef, or my own flesh. The fish soon ignored me and resumed probing the living reef for tiny worms and fish eggs. It’s long, slender mouth, perfectly engineered by eons of natural selection, fit neatly into nooks and crannies among the tangle of reef and porous lava rock. Its vivid yellow coloration notwithstanding, the hand-sized fish seemed quite docile, rocking with the gently surging water. I imagined that for tiny polychaete worms and shrimp, the predator didn’t seem so docile. To prey, the pinpoint black mouth must have seemed to flash thunderously out of nowhere, suddenly filling their whole world.

I dropped over a ledge and stood in fifteen feet of water. The entire length of the reef out to seventy feet was bordered by rippled bands of peppered sand. I went pretty negatively buoyant there because once on this sloping sand bar, it was possible to simply walk along and inspect the reef from below. It was like strolling around wide-eyed through a huge, brilliant aquarium in surround-sound.

In twenty feet of water, I took off my fins and dug them deeply into the sand, placing a loose rock on the exposed ends to hold them against the subtle heartbeat swell. My bubbles rose like jellyfish domes gurgling to the surface. I kneeled on the sand and watched them rise above me and rupture against the pink-bright mirror. A decorated collector urchin inched along. Once I saw one of these prickly pincushions decorated with a lighter and a tampon for camouflage; this one had a more natural disguise of algae, shell bits, and crumbled coral.

Snapping shrimp were audible between my predominant breathing. Different animals made very different sounds and various parts of the reef were consequently identifiably distinct. I felt the lightly rippled sand with my toes as I headed down the gently sloping reef.

Christmas tree worms and gray feather dusters flowed from lobe corals, rocks, and rubble. They fanned the water, filtering out suspended particles, cycling life-blood matter. Even at this shallow depth, greens and reds of the corals dimmed; blue light travels deepest, whereas other colors are quickly absorbed. Many deep water fish and invertebrates are thus red because they appear black to visual predators. Colorful fish like Achilles tangs with vivid orange patches around the base of their tails look blander on the reef shelf than in two feet of water.

Down the changing slope, I peered under a familiar ledge at forty-two feet. The rock was peppered with invertebrates. Barnacles lined the underside, grasping for invisible particles in that common mode of filter-feeding. Tunicates, sponges, and snails filled in the remaining gaps in the shoulder-to-shoulder life. Orange-band surgeon fish, ornate butterflyfish, and yellow tangs darted in and out of the darkness. One night, a six-foot moray eel slithered out of this opening and slipped along my bare leg; I tended not to crawl in it too much thereafter or poke my hands in dark crevices. But I lingered for several minutes, gazing at the diversity and abundance of life tucked in the small alcove. There was little reason to suspect the dive was about to become exhilarating, and a little frightening.

The spine of the reef ended in about seventy feet of water. It wasn’t a definite conclusion, but a gradual transition from a coherent point to a dense assemblage of car-sized boulder to widely scattered smaller rocks and coral rubble. The smooth-groomed bar of deep sand between the two reefs faded similarly away. Rope-thin garden eels poked out from the furthest reaches of the sand, swaying with the current like grain in a gentle plains breeze. Patient and cryptic, they waited to ambush stray wrasses or other small fish that happened off the reef. Any disturbance sent them zipping back into burrows.

Outside the reef, a loose-rubble shelf sloped quickly away. On some edges, Hawaiian coral ecosystems seem broad, but they are in fact quite tight to shore compared with the massive expanses of many shallow South Pacific and Caribbean reefs. A bathymetric side view of the vertical rise to the Hawaiian Islands correctly scaled with the vast surrounding water depth shows these islands as igneous columns shooting almost straight up. Reefs hug the edges, bolstering the islands for future generations as these pillars crumble back to the sea.

We turned back from bluer depths and walked (literally walked despite being six stories under water!) back up the sandy stretch, entering the amphitheater of breaking waves, crunching parrotfish, snapping shrimp, and the occasional distant vessel. At thirty feet we paused for a brief dive stop.

I was adjusting my weights when my buddy tapped me on the shoulder and placed his flat hand vertically on his forehead. I froze for an instant in a mixture of excitement and concern, recognizing the symbol for shark. A good-sized “manō” had followed us up the slope.

The twelve-foot tiger swam slowly toward us. We moved together in a defensive posture and I scooped a jagged rock from the bottom and bit my regulator like a football mouthpiece. When the brute was perhaps thirty feet away, it turned slightly and began to slowly circle us. The sun dappled the rippled sand and highlighted vertical bars on the sharks’ side. The great fish investigated us, swimming deliberately. Its eyes were piercing black diamonds locked on mine, its jagged teeth tangled thorns. The reflection of the overhead sun off the sand illuminated its white belly, spotlighting the predator. The omniscient sounds of the reef faded away and the ocean seemed motionless.

Its tall, dark tail sliced the water with a threatening, understated ease. My breathing quickened in a mixture of fear and awe as the shark arched its back. This can be a visual sign of aggression, but this animal just seemed uncomfortable in water nearly as shallow as it was long. It continued around us, focused, ignoring the plethora of reef fish hugging the nearby rocky wall. We turned with it for the entire circumference of its route until it banked back toward deep water. Having investigated us, the shark swam away just as slowly and deliberately as it had approached. Rhythmically swishing its powerful tail like a haunting metronome, it faded past the outer reaches of the sand bar. Garden eels shook in their burrows as the tiger cruised off the reef.

Divers are rarely hit by sharks. Many attacks involve the mistaken identity of those riding the same near-shore waves that the sharks larger prey (turtles and marine mammals) frequent. Several weeks earlier, a kid on a boogie board had been killed by a tiger shark just a few miles away. I have no idea if it was the same shark I saw – probably not, but it crossed my mind. Usually after someone is attacked, there is a fervent, pointless hunt for the culprit in which many sharks are killed. Most people fail to appreciate that the ultimate culprit is us, having over-fished areas where sharks hunt, changing their ecosystems and foraging patterns, forcing them closer to shore. I was slightly intimidated by being circled by the potentially deadly animal, but more so privileged to have shared the reef with it.

We sat in the warm sun drying off. Hibiscus blossoms pointed straight overhead to the noontime sun, recalling the sign of the remarkable tiger shark encounter. The wind shifted to the nominal trades, blowing in from the ocean, stirring the sea as another group of divers headed out. With the changing conditions, their dive would be more typical of windward Big Island reefs than had ours – they should have gotten there at dawn.

I closed my eyes and rocked internally with that pleasant after-dive sensation. There is a perfectly logical neuro-sensory explanation for this feeling, having to do with different movement of vestibular fluids in the inner ear on land and in the water. But I choose to believe it is the residual synchrony the body retains following an intimate connection with the living sea. Even if you haven’t just been in the water, you can, with the right mindset close your eyes, block out reality, listen with your soul, and feel the rhythmic pulsing of the sea – of life’s very creation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We headed north, toward Honoka’a into one of the most remote rainforests on the Big Island. There were no roads extending more than a few miles up from the Belt Road that crept through the steep, wet North Hilo district. Above that, there were no developments until ten miles into the Hakalau National Wildlife Refuge. This northeast slope of Mauna Kea bears the brunt of the southwesterly trades, sifting moisture from the tropical winds. Streams rushed under the Belt Road, pouring steadily through wind-sculpted cuts and occasionally forming impressive waterfalls like the thunderous 450-foot vertical drop of ‘Akaka Falls. Huge tree ferns, honeysuckle vines, and ōhi’a lehua branches overgrown with epiphytic plants formed damp, tangled jungles.

Persistent mist and nectar laced the air, hints of cloud forests lurking further up the dormant volcano. Two friends and I stashed Tonka under heavy foliage along a one-lane road and started up the Hakalau stream. I hated experiencing it without Elizabeth, but subconsciously I knew we each had to find ourselves – and that this would ultimately lead to difficult choices.

We hacked our way through bogs, scrub forests, and fern patches to the border of the nature refuge, a cloud forest at 4,500 feet. It rained nearly the entire three days, not surprising considering the area received some 250 inches a year, and it was thus impossible to build a fire. It was also surprisingly chilly at our campsite in a primeval, moss-coated gulch covered by ferns and huge fallen trees. The native montane forest was shrouded, silent but for the steady gurgling stream and dripping rain. Upslope breezes moved tangled plants, including the occasional koa and native raspberry. There were no people, no trails, nothing but a glimpse of what the islands once were.

I marveled at the abundance and diversity of the birds, plants, and insects. My friends told me the Hawaiian names of some but my scribbling in the utter humidity was illegible. Odd black beetles with massive lower jaws stood stoutly along tiny streams flushing down a moss-covered log, dunking their mandibles into the passing water and filter-feeding on tiny prey. They strained the flow just like groping feather duster worms or the massive baleen plates of a large whale. Sometimes, whatever the environment, nature finds similar solutions to similar problems in different organisms. This remarkable process of “convergent evolution” explains why some distantly related species have common features. It is, for instance, why some sharks (fish) and dolphins (mammals) are both streamlined. The existence of such an eventuality is as beautiful as any Kona sunset or misty dawn in a cloud forest. But it is a treasure that may only be embraced by exploding any human relation to time, just as one must to fully grasp the majestic creation and destruction of the islands themselves. Convergence and inter-connection in biology, geology, society, and religion became powerful concepts made increasingly clear to me through the benefit of journeys to many edges of the one ocean, beginning in Hawai’i.

The wildlife refuge and remote areas around it were one of the last stands for many native birds, as well as the endangered hoary bat, one of the only indigenous Hawaiian mammals. Introduced species, habitat loss, and hunters had backed native life into a very few undeveloped corners. Much native abundance and diversity had been lost, but shreds remained, as well as the stunning array of habitats that made the Big Island one of the most distinct places in the world. We were fortunate to witness a pair of rare Hawaiian honeycreepers feeding in the cool dawn, their fluid, tandem fluttering echoing in the canopy like the movements of Mozart or the words of Thoreau. Their curved bills slid perfectly into long-stemmed flowers, like butterflyfish probing neatly into reef crevices. The honeycreepers licked out the nectar with specialized tongues as beams of rising sunlight sliced through the dripping, primeval foliage.

My time in Hawai’i was a blur of beaches and canopies, hikes on arid lava rock, fighting Tonka over the Saddle Road, and eye-opening encounters with history, biology, and a very different society. Myriad travels around that fresh place sharply shaped me and began to reveal the intricate relationships between land, sea, and sky, between action and consequence, and between life, love, and faith. They were also the most carefree, uncomplicated times Elizabeth and I ever had. I had never been so happy.

We both took a full load of classes and worked part time, but managed to get to nearly every corner of that fantastic island. With little money to stay in fancy places or eat at nice restaurants, we camped a lot, grilling fresh seafood on sunset beaches and dark forests around the island. Often it was just the two of us, traveling simply, seeing new places, tasting new foods, immersed in mutual love of the sea. For a time, we were perfectly happy, thousands of miles from reality, living the dream together. I thought and hoped it would never end.

So much of what I was learning about marine life was being amplified in vivo beneath the wavering mirror. The diverse ecosystems above and below Big Island water were about the most radical comparative perspective a budding student could have encountered, especially when sampled in such rapid succession. One reptilian experience along the black sand south of Hilo sealed my conversion to marine biology, but these many journeys incrementally nudged me in that direction. Just as life lessons in Tulsa turned me to biology and to Missoula, so did journeys in Hawai’i crystallize my scientific focus, draw me away from freshwater ecology and Montana, and change the course of my whole life.

~~~

North of ‘Akaka Falls, picturesque views of Mauna Kea interspersed with tangled, saturated jungle surrounding the winding Belt Road like a tunnel. Bamboo, wild ginger, and orchids graced the verdant cliffs. Ten-foot sugar cane stalks intermittently lined the road leading into the comfortable tin-roof town of Honoka’a. Here there was a choice – turn west toward Waimea and the north Kohala coast, or continue tracking the Lower Hāmākua Ditch to Kapulena and steep Waipi’o Valley.

The Waipi’o overlook above lush, waterfall-lined cliffs was stunning – a panoramic view of wide blue water, black sand beach, and citrus, breadfruit, and avocado lining the fertile, mile-wide “Valley of the Kings.” Formed from a catastrophic fault collapse and perpetually rushing streams, the amphitheatre valley mouth hails ever wider to the open Pacific. This is where Kahmehameha, most powerful of all Hawaiian kings, was secretly hidden as an infant. The King of the Big Island had ordered the child executed because his mother was believed to have slept with the King of Maui and she also had an odd craving to eat the Big Island King’s eyes. But Kahmehameha grew strong in this spiritual heartland of ancient Hawai’i and ultimately used it as a base to take over all the Islands in 1795, forcibly uniting them under the century-long Hawaiian monarchy that ruled until U.S. Marines took over.

Above Waipi’o Valley, the Belt Road climbed between Mauna Kea and the Kohala Mountains that form the northern sector of the island. Waimea, one of the oldest towns in all the islands, felt about as removed from the ocean as possible. Evergreen trees lined a massive cattle ranch and cowboys bounced casually along on horses kicking up dust. The air was dry half a mile above the water and smelled of livestock and pine. Perhaps I was just homesick for Montana, but I couldn’t help but think of the fresh Rockies passing through Waimea.

Passing over the spine of the island and dropping down the dry side, the overall feel of the land changed remarkably and abruptly. Scrub pines and cactus dotted jagged parched lava fields along the South Kohala coast leading to Kona. Elizabeth and I spent some time at enormous white sand Hāpuna Beach, before we got Tonka and found more out-of-the-way places to experience the sea together.

Further around was an interesting little bay called ‘Anaeho’omelu at the end of Waikoloa Road that the locals called A-Bay. Coastal trails led to the tranquil enclosure from natural brackish pools filled with unique life, ancient freshwater fish ponds, and deep, cool lava caves. It was somewhat tainted by upscale resorts with their manicured sand and paddleboats, but remained a clear place to watch the sun set over the water with views of purple-streaked Haleakalā poking out of the clouds across ‘Alenuihāhā Channel on Mau’i. Haleakalā is the only active Hawaiian volcano not on the Big Island, but she is drifting from the hotspot into her twilight, last erupting with a possible final fling in 1790.

Lava most recently flowed into the ocean along the North Kona coast in the 19^th Century, yet, in stark contrast to the rapid erosion and ecosystem pace so evident just an hour away, the land remained largely unchanged. The jagged rocks still had sharp edges and rested where they were deposited a century before. The windward side of the towering Big Island took the brunt of the trades, squeezed moisture from them and leaving the leeward side amazingly dry. The Kona Coast was effectively a desert, but one with intermittent gardens and coffee plantations amidst expansive black lava fields surrounded by some of the most gorgeous and abundant marine life in the world.

Coming around Keāhole Point, the westernmost edge of the Big Island ten miles north of Kailua-Kona, the seas calmed noticeably. This stretch of Kona Coast down to Kealakekua Bay was completely in the lee of the trades and the snorkeling and diving was incredible. I have yet to dive the South Pacific, Australia, Philippines, or Red Sea, all rated as among the most spectacular in the world. But from my experiences throughout Hawai’i, Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean, the Kona Coast was unrivalled for raw beauty, diversity, and abundance of tropical life. The water was gentle, aquarium clear, and perfectly warm, driving a different flavor, size, and abundance of coral reef and marine creatures.

Many of the same underwater animals seen elsewhere in Hawai’i were common along the Kona coast, just in brighter abundance. The reefs were paved with grazing surgeonfish, crunching parrotfish, banded coral shrimp, pokey spiny urchins, and darting hawkfish, blennies, wrasse, and gobies. Black, yellow, and white striped Moorish idols strutted stately with streaming white dorsal banners, interrupting their promenade long enough to snap a bit of sponge or algae with their narrow, orange-tipped mouths. Bluestripe snappers cruised the reefs, waiting for nightfall to scour the seafloor for small crabs and shrimp. Thin blue horizontal stripes on each fish flashed as massive schools banked in unison, giving the combined individuals a massive, daunting presence to predators. One of the most recognizable fish (for its appearance and its name) on the Kona reefs was the state fish, an aggressive black, orange, and gold trigger called the “humuhumunukunukuäpua’a”. These sleek, solid-bodied bruisers reached two feet here and most other reef fish steered clear of them.

Some of the fish along the Kona Coast were fairly rare. One of the smallest but most beautiful fish in the islands, common along this stretch and uncommon elsewhere, was the Hawaiian cleaner wrasse. With their bright blue tails and long black stripes from their eyes to their tails, they looked like someone dipped the front half of them in neon yellow paint. Like other cleaner wrasses, they eased in and out of the open mouths and gills of larger fish that could easily snap them up. This cooperative relationship (“reciprocal altruism”) benefits both the cleaner, who gets a meal from bits of food and algae, and the cleanee, who is rid of harmful bacterial growth. I once burned a whole tank hovering at thirty feet, watching a cleaner wrasse and a banded shrimp servicing large grouper patiently waiting in line at a ‘cleaning station.’

All of the coral reefs rimming the Big Island are relatively young compared to other Hawaiian Islands and much more so than some of massive reefs throughout the south Pacific. The young Big Island reefs tend to be less productive with more corals than filter-feeding animals. But along the leeward Kona Coast, the sheltered reefs were more expansive and diverse than wave-pounded Hilo and Puna. Light-gray finger corals were thicker and brighter, grayish-brown plate corals extended eight feet across where not shattered by poorly placed boat anchors. Encrusting and false brain corals painted vertical walls burnt orange and rusty red, like a quiet Arizona mesa at sunset. White lace corals formed small heads and intricate branches resembling fine Victorian hand fans. Kona reefs, at least fifteen years ago, were vibrant and bursting with life.

Hilo was my home while I lived on the Big Island, but the Kona Coast was where I left my heart. After the first taste of their sun-soaked Kona corals, I did all I could to get over the island to snorkel or dive. Many formative moments of my early ocean journeys took place on the leeward west coast of the Big Island, most ending in stunning sunsets.

~~~

We bounced on gentle chop on Kailua Bay. There was an hour of light left and we wanted to get in a quick warm-up dive. I had been working all day helping a friend who was repaying me with an evening on his boat. It had been a hot day and the water felt exquisite on my shoulders and neck. Our dive buoy bobbed in the deepening reddish-gold as we dipped beneath the shimmering surface.

North of Kailua-Kona there were phenomenal walls dives with reef zonation patterns stacked close together. Similar life forms still occurred in similar regimes, but since the reef was compressed horizontally, a wide spectrum could be observed by simply moving up and down. I found a sheer face loaded with finger corals and butterflyfish at twenty feet that morphed to encrusting corals and huge parrotfish at fifty.

I hovered, watching the dwindling light change complexion on the brownish-orange wall. If the sky is right, you can look back to the east at sunset and watch the simultaneous rising of the shadow of the Earth on the horizon. What I had never realized until that day, is that if you are under water as the sun sets and the ocean is right, you can witness night emerge from the deep.

Waning sunbeams drew horizontal across the mirror as darkness crawled up the face in a well-defined band, engulfing the deepest red. I crept ever-shallower, following the sunset up the wall, forced to the surface by the rotation of the planet. The last hints of light lingered in wispy clouds as we motored to Honokōhau Bay, an eminently calm spot with excellent night diving.

We tied to a fixed buoy to avoid anchoring on the live reef. Our lights cut the water like spelunkers descending into a massive cavern. Even in the crystal clear water of the leeward Big Island, visibility at night was forty feet at best. We dropped down to an expansive black flat that formed the base of the bay’s floor. There is something inherently disquieting about being in the water at night that has to do with either sensory deprivation or the realization that some of the larger ocean animals capable of inflicting harm are most active at night.

A school of small squid flickered like moths in and out of our beams as we adjusted to the pressure at sixty feet. A moderately-sized octopus (“takū”) moved quickly along a row of boulders at the edge of the flat. It would seem difficult to describe anything with eight arms covered with suction cups as graceful. But this animal, slinking in and out of the rocks, coordinating all of its limbs in a seamless, flowing manner was nothing short of it. Cephalopods are thought to be particularly intelligent. Among other reasons, this probably has something to do with the neural processing required to integrate the motion of all those arms. I’m not sure whether the octopus I saw combing through van-sized stones was brilliant or not, but its motion clearly was.

I followed it along the rocks, until loosing it in a room-sized cave. I approached the enclosure tentatively, recalling the night dive at Onekāhakaha when the massive moray buzzed me. The entire ceiling was coated with circular orangish cups with feathery tentacles wafting the water for zooplankton. The smooth calices into which the corals retracted during the day were fully open, revealing active tentacles. I kneeled at the mouth, lighting up the dense colony while taking care that my exhaled air bubbles didn’t collect under the ceiling where they could harm the animals. Another, larger species soon came on the scene, also pursuing the aggregated zooplankton.

A school of a dozen giant manta rays soon surrounded me as I moved back onto the sand flat. Like swans flying effortlessly in slow motion, the mattress-sized rays cruised through the night, banking with mouths agape. Their backs were black and dotted with off-white spots. Their bellies were stark white, their wing tips sharply pointed, and their thin black tails trailed perfectly symmetrical bodies.

They swam directly at me, filter feeding. My dive light bore through gaping mouths and gill arches, illuminating the particulate snow swirling behind them like the effluent flow from a jet engine. Their mass and alien-like feeding appearance should have been daunting. But they passed on all sides of me, harmlessly grazing like a herd of elk moving down a mountainside in the Montana Missions, gliding elegantly and massively in the warm, dark, water.

~~~

I settled down the sloping reef through bright parrotfish. An offshore flow nudged me from the abrupt meeting of land and sea further down the Kona coast. I rocked along, inching through vivid corals on narrow reef benches rimming a deep channel cut from the volcano. A black chasm emerged on a sudden, shear face, fifty feet down – an ancient artery from a still-beating heart. It was eerie, like an image that appears in a troubled dream.

There was no life inside the lava tube, though I could see only a few feet in. The current sea floor was the fault along which a huge chunk of the Big Island slid back to the ocean. The tube had extended further, but was shaved clean as the rock calved off violently in a massive motion that triggered tsunami on the other islands. I stared into the void as the current sifted out the steep gorge. It was every bit as powerful an image of the islands’ rise and fall as lava scorching the sea.

Kealakekua Bay was a profound, striking blue. The marine life was brighter and bigger than anywhere else I found in the islands. The surface was calm, with soft, clear water and an omniscient overhead sun that fueled huge coral heads along steep shelves. The steep channel extended down the scoured fault, flushing deep currents in and out with a cool, nutrient-rich tidal rhythm underlying warm, calm surface layers of rich life.

A winding road fell from the highway at the town of Captain Cook, switching back past large fenced homes interspersed with cafes and shanties. The bay seemed larger through each break in the coffee trees, tucked against the steep volcano where the ancients buried royalty in cavernous lava tubes shaved off above the sea.

I had launched with one of my best friends on the southern rim of the horseshoe bay at mid-day and paddled the mile or so over to the steep northern rim and the marker commemorating the explorer who brought Hawai’i to the attention of the world. The monument itself (a miniature version of Washington’s obelisk) was less of a memorial to Cook than the profound spectacle of the bay itself. As we crossed, pods of spinner dolphins milled quietly, surfacing slowly in graceful half-slumber, their tight, hydrodynamic fins, flanks, and flukes glistening as they rolled in azure columns of light from the tall sun. The animals tried in vain to ignore tourists in dolphin-watching boats. Despite their obvious infatuation with the animals, they failed to understand that these animals, who feed mainly at night, came into the Bay to rest during the day. Viewing them passively from an idle kayak seemed a more sensitive and rewarding experience than blasting after them with outboards. It was also perhaps more respectful in the eyes of the ancients buried in the volcano above.

Kealakekua Bay was where Captain James Edward Cook’s legendary world-circling voyages came to an end. Cook and his men landed briefly on Kaua’i in early 1778 while searching for the Northwest Passage. When Cook returned to Hawai’i that November, he was mistaken by natives at Kealakekua Bay for Lono, the white god of plentiful harvests. The locals began to suspect that the white men were less than divine when one of them died and they had sex with native women, despite Cook’s orders against it. They left after several months on peaceful terms, but a mast on one of their ships snapped and they returned. The locals were suspicious, wondering what they had done to displease them and Cook was killed in a skirmish that nearly set off a full-scale battle. His fellow sailors buried him in Kealakekua Bay before returning to Britain with news of his death. As they introduced the western world to the Hawaiian Islands, Cook’s bones were slowly incorporated into the living foundation of the same reef I had come upon two centuries later.

I eased away from the black tunnel, down the steep slope toward deeper corals. Huge black triggerfish sparred and a sea turtle pushed past an array of large fan corals waving in subtle undercurrent. From the deep I noticed a flash, followed by several more. A school of cold blue bonito were feeding along the outer walls of the bay. Their streamlined bodies seemed sculpted by a mechanical engineer, with an emphasis on power and speed. As I drifted over the feeding school, they darted below me at a feverish clip. Their dark backs were nearly invisible as I looked down on them against the dark bottom; not accidentally, anything looking up at them against the bright sky would have similar difficulty detecting their light bellies. “Countershading” is a simple adaptation upon which many open-water marine animals have converged.

I lost the school against the darkening bottom as I drifted into a hundred and fifty feet of water. I slowly ascended and the current ceased pulling me out to sea. After the free ride out, I had to swim back and it would be easier at the calm surface. I pumped by BC full of air so I was completely positively buoyant and could direct all my energy to pushing forward. Swimming in dive gear is not the easiest thing in the world, but the panoramic view and warm, calm water helped me along.

The spinner dolphins were revving up in the bay, preparing for the evening hunt and I thought about the boats we had seen hounding them earlier. The ecotourism intrusions into their mid-day resting habitat raised an important and complex conservation issue. As people continue to expand their footprint and desire to see animals in their natural environments, wild places for wildlife continue to dwindle. The dolphins, like the falcons and grizzlies I myself intruded on in wonder at Glacier National Park, would no longer experience life as their ancestors had. On the other hand, it’s unquestionably better that people were chasing them with cameras and fascination than with harpoons. Some people want to try and shut off all human contact with the animals. Others oppose any restrictions on the number and nature of interested people around them. As was becoming increasingly common for me, I saw the most logical approach as an educated balance where animals would have meaningful and enforced protection, but people could experience their beauty in a way that might make them care more about conservation.

I swam back toward Cook’s monument and the sun dipped into the tranquil ocean behind me, drawing shadows on the green coffee fields and dairy farms stretching above the bay. Wispy clouds pulled along high black ridges where centuries-old lava flow spilled, but above them I could see the backside of Mauna Loa’s summit.

As if the rich history and full scenery of the deep blue bay and looming volcano in the setting sun were not enough, flying fish (“malolo”) began to skitter around me. They kicked the huge bottom lobes of their tails as they pressed off the water, extending modified pectoral fins as sails. They skimmed busily just above the water twenty, forty, eighty feet before subtly ducking back into it. The malolo buzzed around me and spinner dolphins continued their acrobatics in small groups passed by me moving out of the golden-red bay as evening settled on the gentle coast of the Big Island.

~~~

My time there was a tranquil dream, an ebbing flow of encounters and emotion. Elizabeth and I found a seemingly endless stream of peaks, valleys, lava rock, reefs, and bays with bright sun and verdant mountainsides around every corner. Warm water and Tonka’s rumbling masked painful memories of our past trouble and an equivocal future that she was pushing me hard on. In many ways, our time in Hawai’I was a fundamental turning point. Typical of youth, I made life-changing choices without fully realizing their scope or consequence. The most difficult was to simply avoid choosing about our future, which was a tacit selection of an inevitable eventuality. In a bitter irony, we were never closer than our times in Hawai’i yet we began to diverge – largely because of the ocean.

A clear outcome of those early tropical Pacific journeys was the course on which my career became set. There were certainly future events that would steer my path. But I arrived in Hawai’i with a love of the water, a general interest in biology, and a desire to work in some aspect of conservation; I left a marine biologist.

A constant I have found is that really major challenges are rarely met with utter resolution, but somewhat paradoxically with many more questions. A whole new world opened up to me in the ocean and its study. My scientific umwelt had been sculpted by the plains and mountains, by conservation issues related to agriculture, mining, logging, and the ecology of rivers and streams. Things are more easily controlled and studied in terrestrial and freshwater systems than in the ocean. It felt a daunting and somewhat intractable realm to attack, but marine life had infected my passion and curiosity. I soaked in every ounce of the warm sea and found answers to life-altering events transpiring around me, but more questions than guidance emerged. What parts of this massive field should I pursue? How would I find my way into this nebulous and ultra-competitive area of study that so many professionals and friends were advising me to avoid? How would I separate myself from the countless others who felt similarly compelled? Would this choice lead me away from Elizabeth? And perhaps most pragmatically – how in the hell was I going to progress in marine biology as an undergraduate student in Missoula, Montana?

Many experiences in the islands faded to warm memories upon my return to the snow-capped peaks, but captivating journeys had altered me forever. The connection between river, lake, ice, and ocean had been fused. One frigid day, high in the Bitterroot, I found this:

Water rushes around a stone a thousand chance ways,

Each white-cold in February’s ice-mingled fingers.

Filling tiny dimples on its face, Earth’s blood pushes hard

For change…for action, until rigid grip slips into motion.

Each dynamic bed lies down a maze of possibilities,

Moss-slippery steps, pouring aquatic cries to the sea.

Landlocked and snow-bound, I continued my studies with a radically different perspective now that my life’s path had been steered to the ocean. I became intensely determined to prove wrong all those advising me I would never make it in this field. My choices, goals, and experiences were now bent through a marine lens. The journey began in earnest.