Chapter 6 The Search
The Search
Moananuiākea: the vast Pacific Ocean
Morning on the Kohala Coast. Calm, oil-slick water, blue and blue and more blue. Black and black and more black. Lava leveling
everything in its way until it meets the ocean. Few beaches. All around, mountains rising from the water like pyramids.
Everyone on O‘ahu spoke about how different the Big Island was, but being here made it feel so much more alive. As if the
island vibrated at a higher frequency. And something about the sheer bulk of those volcanoes made her feel tiny but also part
of the fabric of the place, as if she were woven into the morning by air and water and sunshine.
Nalu kept the boat moving at a good clip as they headed to the point break where the incident with surfer Stuart Callahan
happened. While laypeople threw around the word attack, Minnow preferred bite or incident. Much of the time, people died from a shark bite rather than an all-out attack. White sharks are notoriously curious, and
since they have no hands, they use their mouth to investigate things. And those mouths are home to seven rows of serrated
teeth, with a conveyor belt moving in a new tooth when an old one falls out.
The point was about eight miles south of the Kiawe and a mile south of an enclave of billionaire homes known as Koholā. The water was so smooth, Minnow was able to drink her coffee without spilling. When they arrived at Bird Rock, the name of the surf break, she was still bone dry.
“Why is it called Bird Rock?” Minnow asked.
Nalu pointed to a scattering of dry rocks off the point. “Because there’s usually a bird standing on one of those rocks.”
“What kind of bird?”
“‘Auku‘u. Heron.”
He turned off the motor and they floated forty yards or so outside the bay. Beneath the surface, coral heads in a myriad of
yellows and purples and reds spread out in all directions. The benign beauty made it hard to believe what horrors had happened
in this exact spot a week ago. A body vibrant and alive and riding waves one minute, then bleeding out the next.
Today there was no surf and it was hard to imagine waves rolling in here.
“Is this where they were?” she asked.
“From what I hear, there’s an outside break when the surf is bigger and another smaller one here. The waves were sizable that
day, and Stuart and his dad, Sam, were out there.”
She could see the coral shelf for another forty yards or so, and then the water turned a deeper shade of blue. “Looks like
a big drop-off out there.”
“It gets deep fast.”
She paused, thinking. Steep drops were notorious for attracting sharks because the upwelling of cooler water mixing with warm
was often a place where fish hung out.
“Did you guys have a look underwater?”
“No. We’ve been tight on time.”
“Let’s go farther out. I’d like to get in,” she said.
They were already here, so they may as well see the underwater topography.
Nalu drove them out and dropped anchor. The sun burned down hot, and Minnow couldn’t wait to submerge herself.
Though Nalu had brought tanks, she wanted to free dive.
It was her preferred method of being in the water, less encumbered.
For her sixth birthday, her father had given her an oval-shaped mask that had quickly become her most prized possession.
She carried it everywhere and even slept with it next to her feather-soft pillow.
Since it came with no snorkel, she had been practicing holding her breath and noticed she could stay under for longer periods of time.
Her goal was to grow her own gills, though she never told anyone that.
While she pulled out her mask and fins, Nalu just stood there.
“Are you coming with me?” she asked.
“Do you want me to?”
“Two sets of eyes are always better than one.”
He surveyed the water around the boat, first starboard and then port, almost as though he was afraid.
“You think it’s still hanging around here?” he asked.
“I doubt it, but there’s only one way to find out. And anyway, I want to see the topography for my incident notes.”
Not looking too excited about the prospect, he slowly peeled off his shirt and grabbed his gear, spitting in his mask and
nodding over at two three-prong spears, which lay along the side of the boat. “You need one?” he asked.
Minnow held up her dive knife. “I have this.”
Not that a dive knife or a three-prong would do much in the event of an ambush attack by a large shark, but that was a risk
you took.
As soon as she jumped in, she turned a slow three-sixty, surveying her surroundings.
The silent blue of the water immediately dissolved all thoughts of the world above.
Toward shore, coral shelves and clumps and heads lay beneath schools of yellow tang and a whole menagerie of colorful reef fish.
Her gaze swung around and followed a ledge with a narrow channel leading away from her, walls lined with red pencil urchins and spiny urchins bigger than her head.
Visibility was incredible, an easy eighty feet or more.
It was easy to tell where the surf break was—a large flat table of rock much shallower than the surrounding area sat just outside of them.
Minnow looked up at Nalu, who was still in the boat. “Looks beautiful, all clear,” she said.
“This is some of the clearest water on the coast. All rock, no sand.”
He slid into the water gingerly, like he was trying not to make any splashing sounds, and she wondered what was going on with
him. Though she did have to admit, there was something unsettling about entering the water in the exact spot something so
violent had happened.
“Let’s look around outside first and then follow the ledge in toward shore,” she said, ducking under and swimming toward the
coral shelf where the waves presumably broke.
The way the sunbeams shone on the fish scales made them look like swimming kaleidoscopes, and the purple puffs of coral almost
undulated beneath her. As surreal and lovely as it was, swimming in new waters always gave her a shiver of nerves. You never
knew what was just over the next rock or moving in from the deep.
They swam across the shallow shelf, and Minnow counted four large tiger cowries, a small snowflake eel and one small octopus,
who quickly turned from mauve to mottled brown, like seaweed. Nalu swam down and poked at it with his spear. Not wanting him
to kill the little creature, she tapped his shoulder, causing him to swirl around fast and pop his head out of the water.
His eyes were big. “What?”
“Don’t hurt it,” she said.
He let out a big exhale. “Not planning on it. Sometimes they like to play tug of war.”
A big relief, since octopuses were one of her favorite animals—shy and inquisitive and feisty. She had gotten to know a few
in her underwater ventures. One had even tried to steal her camera, grabbing on with two tentacles and refusing to let go.
By the time she put her head under again, Nalu’s octopus was gone. They swam to the far edge of the ledge, where the bottom fell away fast. Rays of sun disappeared in the abyss, and she understood very clearly why an attack had happened here.
While smaller sharks, especially blacktip and whitetip reef sharks, patrolled these rocky shallows, mature white sharks usually
stayed in cooler, deeper waters. She could easily imagine a large white shark cruising along the drop-off, not actively hunting
but with an eye open for seal, turtle or even a baby whale. Her large tail would have been swishing slowly back and forth,
no hurry, nothing to fear. Stuart had definitely been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Minnow swam down six feet or so and hung there. Her body felt relaxed in the warm water, but her mind was acutely aware of
that curtain of blue, the line where visibility ended, the space to always keep your eye on. Sharks were masters at approaching
on the periphery, often from behind. Their vision was much better than a human’s, and you could bet they saw you before you
saw them. But now, nothing moved in toward them. No dark shadow from the deep, no swift swimming ghost.
They circled around the coral mountain with Nalu staying close on her heels, and Minnow felt like it should be the other way
around, with him being the local. As they entered the bay, narrow cracks opened up in the coral, and when Minnow dove down
to peer inside one, she came face-to-face with a gold-flecked moray eel with half its body out of the hole. Reflexively, she
backed away and then swam up for air.
Nalu came up a few seconds later. “Grandfather puhi,” he said.
“Puhi is ‘eel’?”
He nodded. From her brief time here, she remembered a few Hawaiian names of sea creatures. Honu, turtle. Humuhumunukunukuāpua?a, triggerfish, manō, shark. She’d need to shore up on the multitudes of fish names with the books in the house, faded and water-stained as they
were.
At its deepest, the bay was only twenty feet or so, and Nalu seemed more relaxed in the protected waters, going off on his own and pulling up a giant helmet shell to show her.
The sun toasted Minnow’s back through her top, and she wanted to keep going, following every little curve and cove along the shore, but there was so much to do back on land.
Arranging a visit with Angela Crawford was high on her list. As was getting in to see the mayor.
If she could win him over, half the battle was won.