Guava Moth

This is a guava moth (Ophiusa disjungens), which hails from south-east Asia and the south Pacific, but has also found a home in Hawaii. This one is a darker variant of the moth which is more often mostly yellow or orange.

King Kamehameha statue

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Old.’ See more offerings here.

This is the original statue of Kamehameha 1, the king who first united the Hawaiian Islands. The statue was commissioned in 1878, but was lost off the Falkland Islands. A new statue was made, but in the meantime, the original one was salvaged. The new statue was put up in Honolulu and the original shipped to Kapaau.

Not long after I took this photo, the trees in the background were badly damaged during a windstorm and had to be cut down, so this scene looks quite different today.

Find more information about the statue here. For more information about King Kamehameha’s history, go to nps.gov/puhe/learn/historyculture/kamehameha.htm.

Going up, going down

Humpback whales have returned to Hawaiian waters. They spend the summers in Alaska and then come down here to have their calves and to breed. This year, the first whales were spotted early – at the end of October. I saw a couple in early November, but then nothing for a month.

This, of course, doesn’t mean they weren’t around, just that I didn’t see any. But in the second half of December I started seeing more of them and more activity, and now I see one or two most days.

On this day, I saw five whales. Three were just blowing, but two cruised along the coast, in the same direction I was walking, and were quite active. In the top photo, one of the whales rises out of the water – not a full breach, but what might be called a head slap as it bangs back down. In the other photo, the whale dives. When an adult whale dives it can stay underwater for 20 minutes or more.

Better Days: Swamped boat

Yesterday, in certain parts of the island, the wind was honking. 20 miles south, there was a fresh breeze, but up around Kawaihae it blew a steady 40 knots with many higher gusts. Walking into the wind I had to lean forward at the kind of jaunty angle that would have seen me fall on my face on a calm day.

In the late afternoon, I made my way to Kawaihae harbor to see the waves and get a free skin treatment in the form of sandblasting. The very sheltered harbor was roiled with whitecaps from the whipping offshore wind. Most of the boats were bouncing up and down on the choppy waves, but I noticed something amiss. One of the boats wasn’t bouncing because it was mostly underwater. The outboard engine was the most prominent part to be seen.

I suspect that when the wind drops, the boat will still be barely afloat. But it should be able to be salvaged, pumped out, and ready to go again in fairly short order, so long as it doesn’t get taken out on a day like yesterday.