h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

please consider the following clarification:

kona weather is NOT the rainy season. Kona weather occurs when the prevailing north eastern trade winds cease, or somtimes reverse (more rare). The result is a rather muggy climate (humid), since the normal trade winds keep the humidity at bay.

also, manoa falls are not hard to find ... they are right behind my house. i have some funny photos from playing little league baseball at manoa park. (i am the only haole on the team).

for a really good time, go to palolo falls (next valley over). research the local papers about tourists trying to climb to the 2nd waterfall in manoa (yes, there is one) ...

in palolo valley, there are at least 4 waterfalls that you can climb up and around. i say 'at least' because after a while you are walking in the waterfalls, that run at about a 45 degree angle out of the volcanic crater that you will reach if you keep climbing - go up to the rim for an awesome view.

as far as skin diving off the outfall of the power plant... did you notice the nurse sharks lying on the bottom? nurse sharks are the only common shark that does not need to keep swimming to breathe ... they like the outfall, cause they get a lot of air just lying there on the bottom. but, they are not the only sharks around there. the abundand marine life attracts a lot of sharks to the area. (not that i am afraid of sharks, i used to scrape boat hulls in kewalo basin when i was in high school ... there, you did not see the sharks, you just FELT them)

aloha,
dave

Nurse sharks??

Holy s**t... I thought they were flounder!

there ARE flounder in the ocean around hawaii, but those probably were not ... i generally stay away from surfing
on the sweet point break near the oufall too ... it's always been a bit of an inside joke with my friends; there are not too
many seals in the area.

you have not really lived till you have ridden the same wave with a large shark ... but i prefer porpoises.

as 'they' say ... thanks for all the fish

aloha,
dave

(if you want a happier strory, i would be glad to tell you about waking up at dawn surrounded by a school of porpoises
off the coast of waikiki)

I'd have to go back again and dive electric beach to take a closer look to be sure. They looked like flounder to me, but your description of their behavior sounds dead-on, and I didn't go out of my way to bother them. If I'd seen them in motion, I'd be better able to tell them apart. Alas, since I am now half an ocean away, I won't be able to confirm or deny that they were sharks anytime soon.

Or will I? Do nurse sharks have a dorsal fin? If they have any sort of vertical appendage at all, then these were not sharks. At any rate, these would have been too small to trouble a seal.

Do tell about the porpoise encounter... that was one of the reasons I got into diving at all. The closest I came to diving with dolphins was (once again) at Electric Beach. They were playing in the exhaust when we got there, and we could hear them clicking at each other from the shore. Alas, my partners were a bit slothful in getting into their gear, and the dolphins were long gone by the time we got out there.

in hi school, my physics lab TA worked for a reseach lab and had a couple of dolphins - i got to swim with them
often, until they were "liberated" by environmentalists. mind you these dolphins were not being studied for any militay
application - although many in hawaii have been.

these particular dolphins were seen for years off the coast of waikiki, since they are so tame, they were easy to recognize.

fast forward a few years ... my friend owned a small trimaran that we used to cruise around the hawaiian islands on.

one nite, we went "camping" off the the coast of waikiki ... there was a great classical guitar concert at the waikiki shell
auditorium that we heard perfectly. my favorite place to sleep on the boat is in the trampoline between the hulls at the bow.

around dawn, we (gf and i) were awoken by a school of ~100 dolphins all around the boat ... they made enough of a racket
having their breakfast, that they they woke the rest of the boat. for a moment, i thought about jumping in with them .. but
(thinking a bit) i chose just to watch in amazement from the trampoline as they feasted on the reef around us.

having scuba dove and surfed off waikiki for decades prior to this, i was quite amazed to see this many dolphins so close to
shore (less than 1/2 mile).

i have (before and since) body surfed with dolphins (they are better at it than me) - you just need to go early ... try makapuu
or sandy beach (east end of oahu) very near dawn ... because the "continental" shelf drops off very steep near there, there are a lot
of dolphins in the area ( they eat on the dropoff - if you like to scuba dive, that area around oahu is quite stunning) .. the dolphins also
seem to like to surf.

if you really like to scuba dive - you need a boat - go out near the bird poop rock on the west side of kailua bay (windward oahu).
you can go down in about 75 feet of water, but there is a shelf/cliff there that drops off to ???

there are only one or two more interesting scuba dives in hawaii ... but that will require an entry about the island of lanai