Our boat’s namesake, Honu, means green sea turtle in both Hawaiian and Tahitian. In Fiji, the word for green turtle is fonu. Cook Islanders call it ʻonu. In Tonga, the word is vonu. These honu are regulars on my reef, an area littered with WWII remnants (the concrete structures behind.)  ©Susan Scott

July 18, 2022

Everyone who knows me knows that I’ve been grieving over the recent sale of HONU, our 37-foot French ketch. For me, the boat was so linked to a lifetime of ocean adventures that since I returned from Australia, where we sold the boat, I haven’t felt much like snorkeling. After a bunch of mopey mornings, however, I collected my mask and fins, plodded to the beach, and plunged in. And as always, my marine animals showed up to make my day.

Two Hawaiian green lionfish. These 6-inch-long endemic beauties rest during the day in coral heads and hunt at night for fish and crustaceans. Usually I see only one on this coral head, but that morning I was treated to a pair. ©Susan Scott

I say my animals because I know them, or at least their kin, because I usually swim a specific route along a North Shore reef. The area is neither pristine nor protected, and not particularly pretty. But the animals don’t care about that, or about me. They just carry on with their marvelous lives in their marvelous bodies.

I found three marbled shrimp hiding in this well-used coral crack (two at center, one deeper at left)  The center one is a female, known by her foreleg bristles. This is one of those surprise photos. I did not see the little Hawaiian lionfish, upper right, until I downloaded the pictures. ©Susan Scott

This banded coral shrimp usually has a partner, but I didn’t see it that day. These shrimp pick parasites off fish. Sometimes they emerge to check if my hand needs tidying. ©Susan Scott

A baby devil scorpionfish,  nohu ‘omakaha, about 6 inches long. ©Susan Scott

A flatfish flounder, pāki’i. Both the devil scorpionfish and flounder are nearly impossible to see unless they move. My swimming startled both into skittering. ©Susan Scott

I have taken better photos of these species in the past, but the pictures in this post are remarkable in that I took them all in less than an hour as I swam from one familiar marker to another.

Hawai’iʻs marine animals were there for me when I needed them most. And they fixed me.

These turtles on my reef are so unafraid of people that one bumped into me when it came up for a breath of air. These gentle creatures reminded me that I don’t need a boat named Honu to enjoy the real thing. 

Here’s a happy postscript: Coral specialist, professor Cindy Hunter, director of the U.H. Manoa Marine Option Program, kindly emailed that the white coral tips in my former post are normally white as new growth, and not bleached as I wrote. Yay. Grow, corals, grow.