Humpback Whale Aloha
Several years ago a female humpback whale had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. Rope was wrapped at least four times around the tail, the back and the left front flipper, and there was a line in the whale’s mouth. The crab pot lines were cinched so tight that the rope was digging into the animal’s blubber and leaving visible cuts.
A team of divers realized the only way to save the endangered whale was to dive into the water and cut the ropes. It was a very risky maneuver because the mere flip of a humpback’s massive tail can kill a man. “I was the first diver in the water, and my heart sank when I saw all the lines wrapped around it,” said one of the rescuers.
The 45 to 50 foot female humpback, estimated to weigh 50 tons, floated passively in the water while the rescue team worked for an hour with special curved knives. “When I was cutting the line going through the mouth, her eye was there winking at me, watching me. It was an epic moment of my life.”
When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed to be joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, nudging and pushing them gently, thanking them. They said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives.
The Directory of Kauai wishes that you will be surrounded by friends and family who will help untangle you from life’s difficult situations. And may you always know the joy of giving and receiving aloha.
Humpback Whale Pec Slap
The humpback’s pectoral fin is longer than that of all other species of whales, measuring one-third the whale’s body length. During a pec slap, a humpback will lie on their side or back and slap their long fin along the top of the water. Humpbacks will slap the water’s surface with one or both fins simultaneously, serving as a communication to other whales.
photo by deep sea images
Eddie Aikau – The Surfer
Eddie Aikau was born on Maui, where his father would take the kids down to Kahului Harbor with his old redwood surfboard. The family later moved to Oahu in 1959, where Eddie and younger brother Clyde made themselves boards from marine ply and began surfing the Waikiki Wall. By the age of 16, Eddie had left school and was working at the Dole pineapple cannery, earning enough money to buy his first real board.
Aikau’s first experience in bigger waves came through John Kelly and Sammy Lee, who took him out to Sunset and then Waimea Bay. All the great big-wave riders of the day were out, but Eddie dominated the lineup from start to finish. Photos from that day appeared in Life magazine, and suddenly Eddie was a star.
Through the ’70s, Aikau cemented his reputation as the undisputed master of big Hawaiian surf, winning the Duke Classic at Sunset Beach in 1977 and scoring many other high placings. Aikau was one of Hawai’i's first professional surfers, ranked No. 12 on the inaugural ASP World Tour in 1976.
Where he really shined was in the big surf. “Eddie was born to ride gigantic waves,” Clyde Aikau said. “Surfing Waimea Bay, I would categorize him as confident, fearless and calculated. He didn’t like surfing the tour at all,” Clyde said. “The waves were small at a lot of places around the world, and big waves was his thing.”
After his death, “The Eddie” a big wave invitational was formed in his honor. The tournament has a precondition that open-ocean swells reach a minimum of 20 feet (this translates to a wave face height of over 30 feet). The contest only invites 24 big-wave riders to participate in two rounds of competition, and does not allow the use of jet skis to tow surfers into the waves. The event started in 1984, and is still considered the most recognized and prestigious big-wave contest in the world.
Some surfers become great, and few become heroes. Eddie Aikau became a hero and a legend.
Papahānaumokuākea Meaning
The meaning behind Papahānaumokuākea comes from ancient Hawaiian folklore concerning the genealogy and formation of the Hawaiian Islands. Broken out – papa means foundational earth, hānau means to give birth, moku means small island or large land division, and ākea means wide expanse. Papa (mother earth) and Wākea (father sky) were two of the most recognized Hawaiian ancestors. The union of Papa, worshipped as a primordial force of creation with the power to give life and to heal, and Wākea, worshipped as paternal sky, created and gave birth to the entire archipelago in the vast expanses. The name describes a fertile woman giving birth to a wide stretch of islands beneath a benevolent sky.
The process to give a Hawaiian name to the Monument was an initiative of the State of Hawai‘i Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Native Hawaiian Cultural Working Group, which is comprised of academic scholars, teachers, cultural practitioners, community activists, and resource managers. Representatives from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the State of Hawai‘i’s Department of Land and Natural Resources, Kaho‘olawe Island Reserve Commission, and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs also participated in the discussions that led to the final decision.
The Hawaiian archipelago is long line of fiery islands that stretch from the Big Island to Kure Atoll. The preservation of the monument, as well as the name Papahānaumokuākea, strengthens Hawai‘i’s cultural foundation, and grounds it to an important part of Hawaii’s historical past. It is a name that encourages birth, abundance, and the continued procreative forces of earth, sea, and sky. Papahānaumokuākea will continue providing life for everything that gives birth in the Hawaiian archipelago.
Eddie Aikau – The Lifeguard
In 1967 Eddie persuaded the City & County of Honolulu to appoint him the first North Shore lifeguard. He was given the task of covering all beaches between Haleiwa and Sunset and saved hundreds of lives over the next three years. The roving patrol was then disbanded and Aikau was assigned to Waimea Bay, where no lives were lost while he was on duty.
The Aikau family was water-oriented; they were surfers, divers, sailors, and paddlers. Eddie had the water knowledge, and that’s what made him such a great lifeguard and surfer. Before and after his work shifts, Aikau would surf at Waimea Bay, especially when the waves were big. At the time, only an elite handful of surfers had the knowledge and courage to ride Waimea Bay when wave-face heights surpassed 40 feet. Aikau was at the top of the pecking order.
Long before Jet Ski and other personal watercraft became in vogue for assisting lifeguards, Aikau was paddling into giant waves and swimming through treacherous conditions to save lives. In 1971, Aikau was named Lifeguard of the Year. He was involved in hundreds of rescues over the next decade, many of them undocumented. He would make a rescue and when it came time to fill out the forms, he would say, “Nah, not important. The guy is alive, that’s the important thing.”
The last person lifeguard Eddie Aikau rescued at Waimea Bay was a young TV producer named John Orland, who had just wrapped up production on a TV pilot called the “Hawaii Experience,” starring Bob Crane from Hogan’s Heroes. He was rescued on February 19, 1978, less than a month before Eddie Aikau was lost at sea. “When people say Eddie is a hero, it makes us feel very proud,” says his younger brother Clyde. “Still, to this day, tears come down as I talk about it. But at the same time, it is very humbling to know that people still recognize the name Eddie Aikau.”
Kauai History and Easter Island
At about the same time of the arrival of the earliest settlers to Kauai around 200-300 AD, Polynesians were voyaging from the Marquesas Islands in an easterly direction and discovering Easter Island. Easter Island is also one of the most remote islands on Earth, with the coast of Chile lying 2,300 miles to the east, Tahiti 2,500 miles to the northwest, and the nearest island is tiny Pitcairn island, 1,400 miles to the west. But, the people of the Pacific were intimately tied to the ocean and they fully embraced it.
Like the voyagers who landed on Kauai, the hardy Polynesians who found Easter Island (Rapa Nui) came prepared to stay. They brought tools and food, and plants and animals to begin a new life. But the island they found was not a typical Polynesian paradise. It was out of the tropics, and did not have rivers or protective reefs, but it had a small forest of large trees, craters which would hold drinking water, obsidian for making tools, as well as easily worked volcanic rock. Obsidian is a rock which is a type of naturally occurring glass produced when volcanic lava cools rapidly and freezes without sufficient time for crystal growth. Many of the ‘black sand’ beaches you see today on Hawaii are examples of obsidian. Obsidian was also used in the construction of large stone statues (moai) which were similar to statues Polynesians made on the Marquesas Islands. The upright stone statues stood on a shrine (ahu) as representatives of sacred chiefs and gods.
