Author Archives: Graham

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About Graham

I take photos when I'm out and about, recording life on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Resting shark

While out snorkeling one day I came across this scene. It’s not a great photo (though the murkiness adds a little to the menace, I think), but still enough to identify it as a shark, resting on the sandy bottom. Later in the day, it was still there. It was more visible with its head out from under the ledge, but the water was cloudier so I didn’t take photos.

I’m pretty sure this is a whitetip reef shark as I’ve heard about one hanging out in that area. The white tips, that give the shark its name, are on the dorsal and tail fins so aren’t visible in this image.

In response to WPC ‘A face in the crowd.’

Stampede

When I’m out walking I often pass fields of cattle. In general they either stare dolefully or run off when I look at them. Recently though, I was walking alongside one field and, at my appearance, the cattle ran to one side of the field, formed a group and then thundered down the hill toward me. When they got close, they did a U-turn and shot back up the hill.

Next day they did the same thing, but this time instead of the U-turn they stopped just across the hedge from me and stared. All the running about had stirred up the cattle egrets that invariably accompany them and that’s when I took this photo. I particularly like the devilish horns of the one animal peering out from the crowd.

I moved on and the cattle followed. We repeated this a couple of times before they decided they’d had enough.

On the third day, my appearance provoked only dull stares. Obviously the thrill of my presence had gone.

Showy Chinese hibiscus

This last week or so my attention’s been drawn to the Chinese hibiscus flowers around here. Always a showy flower, they’re currently at the peak of their bloom. When the sun shines on them, they look perfectly stunning.

Emergency alert siren

This is one of Hawaii’s emergency alert sirens. There are different styles, but I like how this one, at Kawaihae, emerges from the palm trees. The sirens are intended to warn of impending tsunamis and, these days, nuclear attack.

These sirens did not go off during the recent false missile attack fiasco. That issue concerned messages sent to residents’ phones and to radio and TV. In the aftermath of that incident, I read in a news report that “According to state officials, the watch officer had been a cause for concern to his colleagues for more than a decade and had twice before mistaken drills for real alerts. It was unclear how he had managed to remain in such a sensitive post for so long.” Not in this household. Our ‘joke’ is that a person has to kill three people here before it’s considered serious enough to be fired from a government job. I guess causing widespread panic and embarrassing the state worldwide must be roughly the equivalent.