Sharks and fish

Seeing a shark is always a good anecdote. Okay I didn't see the shark but I was snorkeling with people who saw a shark and that's almost as good. The snorkeling near the hotel isn't great but our first year here we found out where the locals snorkel, which is down Highway 30 (toward the waist of Maui), mile marker 14 to be exact, near the French restaurant that we never go to. There's a small strip of beach between the highway and the ocean, just enough to pull your car in between the trees and set a couple of towels down. The black sand beaches slope gently toward the water, there's no surf, because of the reef, which is good for small children, and there's a lot of shade. Once you head out about 20 feet, through a channel, the snorkeling is amazing. We've always seen everything: trigger fish, parrot fish, wrasses of all colors, turtles galore, and big eels with chalk-white cottony mouths and teeth. Every few years there's a shark attack at mile marker 14 too, but we haven't seen a shark.

I went out today with my brother Dave, who is brave, especially when I told him that it might not be the best time of the month for me to be snorkeling in shark-invested waters. He wasn't scared. But after a half hour, when we reached the end of the reef and the waters became deep, I became a little nervous and headed in. He and some others stayed out exploring. They came back in another half hour having seen a 7-8 foot white-tip shark asleep on the bottom of the ocean near the edge of the reef. He thinks it was asleep, though it could have been just being vewy vewy quiet, waiting for something yummy to come along. Or perhaps it had recently eaten and was being a bottom potato.

We managed to keep the news from the kids. But there is something about sharks, especially big ones, that excites listeners. Tomorrow we'll go back again.