Selection of Beasts

Our book told us that when we went to Kapalu'u beach, if we were lucky, we'd see some turtles. So we went there, and saw an amazing selection of beasts.

When we got to the beach, there was a seal lying there, surrounded by cones. The boys thought it was dead, and were very excited, but then they noticed it was breathing. It was, it turned out, a Hawaiin monk seal, which are very rare, and on the Big Island, extraordinarily rare. Because they are so rare, they are loved and nurtured, and as well as the cones there was a lifeguard who dispersed the crowd when it got too big (or took too many pictures.) There are about 1200 of these seals left, and a really small number (like 6) on the Big Island.



A special seal team came (with seal team t-shirts so we knew), and they knew everything about this particular seal - it was one year old, and it usually hung around on the other side of the island, which they (the seal team) prefer, partly because there are fewer people there, and it's not good for seals to hang around with people, and partly because that's where the seal team are based. We spoke to someone else later who'd been at the beach, and apparently at about 6 o'clock in the evening it flopped back into the sea.

After the excitement of the we ventured into the water - and sat there, very close to the beach, in very shallow water, was a turtle. The turtle seemed pretty oblivious to all the people getting excited and shouting 'turtle' and just carried on nibbling on seaweed. It seemed to unexcited that people got bored and wandered away. Then someone new would see the turtle and shout 'Turtle, turtle!', and not understand why everyone else nodded and said 'Uh-huh'.

Plus, it's very, very illegal to touch or 'interfere with' a turtle in any way, so when waves made the turtle drift towards people they had to run and leap out of the way. Apparently turtles can bite pretty hard too, if you piss them off.

The turtle was so exciting that I went to buy a crappy overpriced waterproof disposable camera from a stall on the beach. Results below.






Now that I had my disposable camera, I went out to take pictures of fish, of which there were impressive numbers.

Here is a selection of fish:


Here are some more fish:




Here's me.