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Snorkeling & Water Adventures

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Total Number of Articles - 58
  • Things You Can Do to Protect Coral Reefs

    Our world's coral reefs are precious and fragile. You may not live near one, but your health may rely on its health. There are many things you can do to help preserve our coral reefs, in Hawaii and beyond. This list is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Coral Reef Conservation Program.

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  • There's Plastic In My Fish Sandwich!

    Plastic bottles that once contained water, bleach, motor oil and other liquids. Plastic lobster and crab traps. Mounds of nylon fishing nets. I am not surprised when I find this kind of trash on the beach. What I don’t understand, though, are the televisions, car wheels and the toilet seat lids that I have discovered on more than one beach walk.

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  • What? There's Another Whale Besides the Humpback?

    false killer whale head lungeAt the marina, six biologists popped out of their van, hauling a dozen waterproof Pelican cases of all sizes and colors. They stashed their gear on a 27-foot Boston Whaler with military precision. Within a few minutes, we pushed off and motored out of the harbor. I took my spot on the fly bridge, the extended prow of the boat--think hood ornament of a car. My job as a volunteer on board would be to look for blows, breaches, lunges, dorsal fins, logging or any other whale behavior at the surface of the ocean. Read More
  • How to Select a Whale Watching Boat Tour

    Whalewatching Waikoloa catamaran, Big IslandThere are dozens of boat companies from which to choose. They all offer “whale watching tours.” Many claim they are the best. Others guarantee you’ll see a whale. It can get a tad overwhelming. How is a person to decide? Here, we provide a few questions to ask—the boat operator and yourself—in order to make sure you experience a pleasurable whale watching outing. Read More
  • Whale Watching Tips

    Hawaiian humpback whale breaching off MauiHumpback whales spend plenty of their time in Hawaii near-shore. That makes it easy to spot them. Here are a few tips on what to pack and what to look for and where to go to witness these behemoths in action.

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  • Top Ten Locations for Land-Based Whale Watching

    Whalewatching tour boat spots humpback off MauiThere are a few characteristics in common for these land-based whale watching sites, as identified by the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. First, they are easy to access, not too difficult to locate and there’s parking nearby. Second—more important—is their elevation—the higher elevation the greater viewing distance. Read More
  • Friendly Snorkeling Tips

    Coral reefs are among the world’s most spectacular habitats and snorkeling is an excellent way to explore them. Follow these simple guidelines to help protect the coral reefs you visit.

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  • Hawaii's Whaling History

    mark twain's letters from hawaii bookIn 1866, Samuel Clemens visited Hawaii—or the Sandwich Islands, as he still liked to call the archipelago. He was a young man, new to the pseudonym Mark Twain, notable for wearing a brown, linen duster in his travels “ransacking” the islands. His hair was red then, always whipped into a frenzy by the trade winds, but he already sported that wooly mustache of his. Two of Twain’s 25 letters originally published by the Sacramento Union and included in the anthology Mark Twain’s Letters from Hawaii, edited by A. Grove Day, tackle whaling. Before the big business of sugar took over, whaling provided a good economy to the Hawaiian Islands.

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  • Waves of Waimea Bay

    surfers at waimea bay on a big day

    Beyond the always crowded parking lot. Past the sticks of showers circling the public restrooms. Far to the south of the command center that is the lifeguard tower in the center of Waimea Bay is a rock jutting into the ocean at the edge of the beach. It’s more than twice my height and where I wanted to be to photograph the surf rolling into Waimea Bay—surf so big that lifeguards had closed the beach to swimming and alerted beachgoers on a public address system whenever ripples on the water’s surface far on the horizon, made their way to shore, hit the steeply rising land, and pitched into the monster surf for which Waimea is famous. The right-breaking waves off the point at the north end of the bay can grow to 50 feet. That’s no small thing. In fact, that’s the height of a five-story building.

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  • The Inspiration of a Master Canoe Shaper

    kaukahi canoe on display at outrigger waikiki on the beachI spent an afternoon last week in an industrial area a few miles from Honolulu International Airport, past a sand and gravel supplier, a drywall contractor and a cabinet re-facing company, in a setting that made me wonder whether Hawaii Five-0 had filmed here. The place was hot, reeked of migraine-inducing paint fumes, and everything was coated in layers of dust that you could measure in quarter inches, and for Tay Perry, this is his office away from the office. Amidst the sounds of power sanders and paint guns, this is where a lifetime of passion and sweat go into creating Tay’s legacy—shaping canoes. Read More
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