swimming with the prehistoric

                                       hawaiian green sea turtle (above photo by john fischer)

I try to make it a weekly event that I go swimming and snorkling in front of the Moana Surfrider Hotel in Waikiki. I know it's full of tourists but I do it for one reason and one reason alone. Swimming with Hawaiian green sea turtles! It's got to be the most exhilarating experience one can ever imagine. 

Each day around 4pm there's at least one turtle that swims in the same area of the beach. Back and forth, back and forth. It pops it's  head up for air, then back down in the water it goes. Unless you have a snorkle, you wouldn't even know it's swimming right beneath your feet, as this has happened many times before. The nearest I think I've knowingly come to the tortoise is about 2 feet and that's what I saw with my own eyes  near my own feet looking thru my snorkle. That's pretty close. Sometimes there's a baby green turtle swimming in the ocean near its mother, but never side by side. One is usually at the opposite length from one another. Normally its the same turtle or both mother and baby each day. How or why it swims the same area of a large stretch of Waikiki Beach is beyond me. I read that this area of the beach in front of the Moana Surfrider is usually where several large green sea turtles have been swimming and laying their eggs for hundreds of years! 

Today, there was a new turtle that I've never seen before in the area and it was gargantuan! It was so prehistoric looking up close, that it was kind of scary being so close. I'm also quite sure it was very, very old, just by looking at the shell. It's unbelievable that they live to be 100 years old! The body or shell of the tortoise was at least 3 feet long. The head was the size of a 5 year old child! Forget the size of the legs and feet. Just watching it chomp away at the surrounding growth of seaweed within arms reach was to overwhelming. The tortoise acted like he wasn't bothered by my presence. 


I had my disposable underwater camera in hand. Snap, snap, snap! This was my first effort of underwater photography. Who knows if these pictures would come out? I had them developed and the results are the last two photos. Look out Jacque Cousteau!