Black Rock and Whale Watching

Today was busy busy busy. And utterly amazing.

Woke up early, 7:30, got ready, headed out to Black Rock to snorkel. It's the richest part of the island, lots of shopping, but also great snorkeling. Last trip they cliff-jumped here, but this trip there were signs against it. Some did anyway, but I didn't after seeing the snorkeling... but I'm getting ahead of myself. So I headed out, waited for a bit, it ended up being me, Swaffy, Anh and Liz snorkeling together. We headed out and near where the rock jutted into the water, at the edge of the sandy beach, there was a LOT of coral. So many fish, too... some people saw an eel and a stingray, I missed those, but I saw lots of huge unicornfish, urchins (including one I hadn't seen before, a blue one), what I think were probably Sergeant Majors, some surgeonfishes, maybe some triggerfishes, and most exciting of all, six cuttlefish all together. They were brown and white splotchy at first, but after watching them for a bit I dove at them and they turned stark white and jetted away. Very cool. (By the by, I've decided “to Humboldt” is a new verb meaning to do something you probably shouldn't, just to experience it yourself, most often applied to scientific endeavors. Like scaring cuttlefish on purpose to see the color change.) Swam around a bit, and even more excitingly, heard whalesong. Yesterday I'm not so sure about, but this was DEFINITELY it. So, so cool. Truly amazing.

Came in a little earlier than I might have otherwise to write things down, trying to make sure I remembered as much as possible. Didn't manage to figure out all the fish I saw, but I did confirm a few, which was great. After that we played in the surf some more, letting it crash us around for a bit. Mike's extremely good at predicting the good waves, and riding them well. I personally prefer to go low, riding them high is fun, but intimidating. As confirmed later that day when we noticed a woman, clearly injured, not too far from our group. A few of us offered aid to her people taking care of her, Caitlin ran to get someone, Nate offered water, and Nate, Liz, Anh, Brenna and I (if anyone else helped too, I apologize) helped break the surf. See, she was still in the zone where the tide sometimes hits, so we used our backs, along with one guy from her group (who said they were from Cincinnati) who first thought of the idea. Eventually the medical folks got there and took her off on a stretcher. She was clearly in immense pain, it was uncomfortable beyond belief to watch, but she could still move her arms and legs so I don't think she'll have any permanent damage. I hope not, anyway. Good luck to her and her (family/friends/whoever she was with). I wish we could have done more to help, but at least we were able to do something.

Amusingly, in a way, it was less than an hour later when we were in the surf again. I pointed out that we were engaging in the EXACT SAME BEHAVIOR we had just seen the potential negative results from, and in fact I did ride one wave high and end up landing on my face (no damage beyond scratches, fortunately). After that I went back to riding them low. So fun, stupid or not. Ate our packed lunches on the beach and headed back up to the vans. Zypy forgot her shirt and hat so she had to run back and grab it, I guarded the bags that she left behind to get the stuff she left behind... heh. Examined the local plants while I was sitting. Then it was off to whalewatching.

So we hung out for a bit, I had a delicious delicious Maui Breeze (mango and strawberry) smoothie and resisted the urge to buy a cheap carved turtle, talked to David a bit, he gave me a good idea for the group writing thing, and then got on the whale-watch boat. Not much on first, but then we got to a whale and her calf. At first she had two male escorts, then only the one. The calf was really active, lots of breaches, it was amazing. He got CLOSE too. Amazingly close. The mother stuck around, a few fin slaps and such, but no big big displays. Still, amazing, wonderful experience. Crazy. Later we saw some other whales, a competition pod of males, another female and calf, but that was about it. Nothing as amazing as that first bit that we lucked on out. I've got some okay photos, but others have better, naturally. Talked to a professional photographer for a bit, talked longer to Josh, the guy on the boat's microphone. Oh! I almost forgot. They also put the hydrophone in the water and we got to hear whalesong that way. It was wonderful. So I talked to Josh for a while, apparently he's from New York. I think he was trying to recruit me a little bit, I said I was a bio major and he said “this is right up your alley then,” and when I said I'd miss snow he said “that's what I thought too, but...” He's from New York, apparently went to music school at a small college up there and then did this. Cool stuff. The most interesting part to me personally, though, was finding out about Koho'olawe. Known as the “Target Isle,” it was used for a while as a bombing range by the US military. Now they're doing work to restore the island, which is of course difficult between the immense damage done and the unexploded ordnance still on the island. I think I might like to volunteer them, maybe after I graduate from Hiram. It just seems like a really good, worthwhile project. http://kahoolawe.hawaii.gov/ by the way. And www.pacificwhale.org for the non-profit research and education group that ran the whale-watch.

So we got our free posters for going on the boat and now we're back in the condos, the girls are cooking some sort of chicken dish tonight. Tomorrow we have to leave at 6:30 for what sounds like the hike of a lifetime: we start at 10K feet up, cold, move into a blazing hot rainshadow desert, down to 7K, and then go back up to 8K through a rainforest. It's apparently at least 7 hours long and beats you up, but what a fantastic experience. 12 miles. Gonna sleep well tonight... or at least, I certainly hope so.

Sunday, January 17th, roughly 6-6:35 PM local time

EDIT: January 18th, roughly 11:15 PM local time

I forgot to mention Josh's humor. The best one being as follows. He talked about how, even once a male humpback had earned "primary escort" position with a female, he still only had a 10-15% chance of mating with her. The second or third time this fact came up (it was relevant every time, I promise), he said "I'm sure a lot of you guys can relate." Naturally, I had been thinking of that joke the whole time, so it was nice to hear him say it. So, so true.