My husband is a fantastic snorkeler. He took this picture of this beautiful Green Hawaiian Sea Turtle in Kapalua Bay. He grew up snorkeling with his father every summer in Maui and continues the tradition with us. He is comfortable in the ocean. On our honeymoon we snorkeled a different location on the island every day for seven days, ignoring the shark signs along Honoapiilani Highway and continuing out around the rocks always in hopes of swimming with turtles.
I’ve always prefered to stay around people — so now I snorkel close to shore with the kids and he still goes out. We just returned from our trip, where we saw Yellow Tang, Spotted Boxfish, and of course — the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a, (the most fun to say) which means “triggerfish with a snout like a pig.”
My husband always finds the turtles though… and at least the kids and I get to look at the pictures he has taken. Here are some from the last few days:
After last year’s trip, feeling sorry about not being a better snorkeling partner, I wrote this poem:
I’m sorry
I did not follow you, masked, flippered,
wanting, into the mouth of the ocean, slippered
in darting eels, swathed in fish. I turned
to stay where sunlight murks, pools in the shallows,
where the water sits soft. You followed the sea’s motion
to reef’s sharpness, corals compressed with ocean.
So I did not witness when the gliding turtle broke
surface to sip air, as ocean slid and spoke
around you. As you floated – I had swum
to shore; you in paradise, I in panic—
You saw salt bloom where I saw skeletal death.
You heard the sea sighing. I heard jagged breath.
Poetry and Other Writing 