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View From Here - Hawaii Travel Blog - Snorkeling & Water Adventures

Total Number of Entries - 60

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Contemplating Kukui Trees and What to Pack

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Mon 8/29/2011

Destination: Kauai

So, I am sitting here contemplating kukui trees. Mine are weeping. The kukui tree is the official state tree of Hawaii. It was sort of the like the Swiss Army Knife of trees back in old Hawaii. Hawaiians used its leaves, branches, trunks and seeds to make fires, canoes, medicines, fish bait, fish floats, dye, an adhesive, tattoos, cloth and oil for lamps. Today, the kukui is most well-known for its seeds that are strung into lei. You might know it as the candlenut tree. Its scientific name is Aleurites moluccana. What I like about the tree is it embodies my personal philosophy when it comes to landscaping my yard—native and care-free.
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Big Bertha the Manta Ray Gives Birth

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Thu 8/11/2011

Destination: Hawaii Island

Boy, that girl was hardly showing when I saw her last February. I couldn't even tell she was pregnant, and by then, she was a good 8 months along. The mother of all manta rays, Big Bertha, gave birth this summer to possibly two baby manta rays.
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Summer Whalewatching in Hawaii: Part Four

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Mon 8/8/2011

Destination: Kauai

False killer whales. They look nothing like the black-and-white killer whales so well known in the Pacific Northwest and occasionally spotted in Hawaii. False killer whales are dark grey and grow to approximately 12 to 18 feet. Their skull and teeth, however, are similar to Orcinus orca and gave rise to the scientific name Pseudorca crasidens.
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Summer Whalewatching: Part Three

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Wed 8/3/2011

Destination: Kauai

"One animal. Twelve o'clock. Fifty meters," Renee called out. She had briefed me earlier on my duties and stressed the three things that Robin--captaining our Wild Whale research vessel--was adamant about. He wanted to hear 1) animal species or, at the very least, its behavior, such as splash, blow, breach; 2) location on the clock, using the boat's bow as 12:00 and the stern as 6:00; and 3) distance from the boat in meters.
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Summer Whalewatching in Hawaii: Part Two

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Sun 7/31/2011

Destination: Kauai

After a fuel pump or something went out that led to the cancellation of the inaugural day of research, I was invited back on Saturday. It was to be the 600th day on the water over 12 years in Hawaii for Cascadia Research. In the intervening 10 days, the team had spotted, gathered tissue samples and photo-identified numerous individuals from several groups of rough-toothed dolphins. They’d also encountered their largest group of bottlenose dolphins in Hawaii—200 individuals. The highlight of the trip thus far, though, had to be spending about an hour mingling with four killer whales.
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Sharks, Shrimp & Pie

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Thu 7/28/2011

Destination: Oahu

I convinced my co-worker Andrea to kick off a couple hours early and take me to one of her favorite snorkeling beaches—Shark’s Cove, a few miles past Waimea Bay on Oahu’s North Shore. She seemed gung ho, but when I upped the offer with dinner at a nationally-recognized shrimp truck, she was all in, as they say.
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Summer Whalewatching in Hawaii

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Wed 7/20/2011

Destination: Kauai

On my volunteer days at Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge during the summer, I am often asked, “When do the whales come back?” What people really mean is, “When are the humpback whales in Hawaiian waters?” And the answer to that question is November through April. But there are more than just humpback whales in Hawaii.

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Consider the Canoe--Part One

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Wed 7/13/2011

I've had personal relationships with the canoe. But it wasn’t until I sat with my right hip abutted to the gunnels of a 25-foot ocean-going canoe in a British Columbia fjord off Vancouver that I started to make a connection among all my canoe encounters. My group of a dozen travel bloggers sat two abreast in a canoe, paddling and stroking and listening and imagining as our guide with Takaya Tours shared traditional songs, stories and drumming from her First Nation’s people, the Tsleil-Waututh

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Maui Man Paddles SUP Board from Big Island to Kauai

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Tue 6/28/2011

Destination: Hawaii Island, Kauai, Maui, Oahu

On Tuesday, June 21, just before 9:00 p.m., Bart de Zwart stepped off land at Keokea Bay on Big Island. Five days later, just before sunset on Sunday evening, he took his first steps on ground again at Kalapaki Beach on Kauai. He took 215,000 paddlestrokes to navigate his 14-foot stand-up board on what he called the “ultimate crossing,” a 300-mile journey.

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Hanging out with Sharks

Kim Steutermann Rogers on Mon 6/27/2011

Destination: Kauai

“If you come across a shark, don’t look it eye to eye and maybe it will hang around a while,” said Wayne, our dive master before we descended head first into a slot cavern at Kauai’s best summer shore dive—Tunnels. On a recent outing, Wayne had encountered a shark here—in this very same dive spot—and human and shark hung out for a while.
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