October 2, 2020
After several friends suggested I watch a 2020 Netflix nature film called “My Octopus Teacher,” I tuned in, settling in for a story about octopus intelligence. It’s done well. I recommend it. But another focus of the film struck close to home, and that’s how the South African filmmaker’s long-term experiences in a shallow patch of ocean gave him a life-changing appreciation of the connection between humans and animals.
I too get revelations about my place on this planet, except rather than cold-water snorkeling in a kelp forest, mine occur in the warm water of Oahu’s North Shore.
My standard snorkeling route, loaded with rocky rubble and relics of war, is not what most people consider good snorkeling. But to me it’s a magic kingdom. Each morning as I stand at the water’s edge holding mask, snorkel, and fins, I get that childhood tickle of Christmas morning, wondering what gifts the ocean will give me this time.
In 2012, in 3-to-4-feet of water, I found this seahorse at the base of a rusty post pounded into the ocean floor during World War II. That seahorse was the gift of a lifetime. ©Susan Scott
Craig Forster, the creator of “My Octopus Teacher,” never names his octopus, but the creatures I connect with feel like friends, and I want to call them something meaningful to me. Two such friends are Topsy and Turvy, a pair of coral heads I use as navigation markers in my snorkeling space.
The coral heads, about the size of two large ottomans, lie in about 5 feet of water. Formerly, these creamy lumps of life were visible from a distance, but after a week of enormous surf last year, I found the twins lying on their side, bowled over by waves.
Winter surf turned these two mounds of lobe coral topsy-turvy in 2019. ©Susan Scott
But even tipped sideways, Topsy and Turvy remain as guides to my first stop, a raised coral head where I often find an adult female turtle that sleeps under the crack. Sometimes the turtle goes in head first, but when backed in, she lifts her head, blinks at me, and goes right back to sleep. Her name is Serenity.
Serenity’s space is a bunkhouse of species. The red “flower” is a the egg mass of the Spanish dancer nudibranch. At right, the turtle has displaced a juvenile yellowtail coris wrasse. ©Susan Scott
From the Crack of Serenity, I continue on, swimming through dozens of concrete anti-landing craft structures from World War II, symbols of death turned to anchors of life as artificial reefs.
During World War II, the U.S. military placed concrete pyramids in waters around Oahu to prevent entry of Japanese landing craft. Most of the structures have been removed. The remaining have been claimed by marine life and will be left in peace. ©Susan Scott
Past these pointy pyramids is Green Turtle Spa, a car-sized coral head encircled by rocks someone carried in from the outer reef. Up to a dozen or so turtles come and go here, floating inside the circle as fish nibble algae and parasites off their shells and flippers.
At Green Turtle Spa, damselfish, surgeonfish, and wrasses shelter in rock piles surrounding a sand patch, surrounding a coral head. When turtles show up for cleaning, the fish emerge. ©Susan Scott
Some people were angry over this human rearranging of the ocean floor, but not me. The place is hardly pristine and the fish masseurs love the shelter of that low rock wall, as do other species, including dozens of sap suckers.
These ringed sap suckers are having a get-together at Green Turtle Spa. Because the nudibranch relatives are hermaphrodites, each having both male and female reproductive organs, any individual of their own species can be a mate. ©Susan Scott
At the west end of my swim is the Barber Shop, a craggy boulder that is home to a pair of banded coral shrimp, also known as barber pole shrimp for their red and white stripes.
This is one of a pair of banded coral shrimp that hang upside-down in a crack of the Barber Shop. The shrimp, whose long white antennae give away their hiding places, come out at night to nibble parasites and dead skin off eels and other fish. ©Susan Scott
Then I turn around and head east along the 2-3-foot deep interface between sand and rubble, a place with endless wonders. Here I’ve found seahorses, flying gurnards, frogfish, peacock flounders, goatfish, jacks, and other jaw-dropping sights. It isn’t always so, of course, but not knowing what’s in store is part of the fun.
This reef fish is called a flying gurnard after its winglike pectoral fins, which the fish flares when startled. Flying gurnards don’t fly, but instead walk on the ocean floor using spikey pectoral fins that dig for food as they go. ©Susan Scott
On the east end of my route is Octopus Rock, another car-sized coral head whose marvels I wrote about in August (bit.ly/30mVba6.) Last week, I found a baby octopus tucked into one of its crevices, a descendant, I choose to believe, of the coral head’s namesake.
And then it’s back to Topsy and Turvy, where I emerge for a beach walk.
The violent toppling of those coral colonies that had weathered Oahu’s winter surf for decades saddened me at first. They looked so broken, lying there on their side. But the skewed skeletons soon attracted moray eels, marbled shrimp, domino damselfish, and others that feed on, and hide in, the exposed nooks and crannies. And the coral animals that built the calcium carbonate mounds, well, they just keep on cloning, inching up the sides to bask in the sun.
Some days this year, I feel like Topsy and Turvy, knocked down by forces beyond my control. But I get encouraged when I see that even after overwhelming upheaval, life forms so quickly adapt. My marine animal teachers give me hope that the disease, racism, and political discord we humans are suffering from now will bring changes that will eventually make this a better world. In the meantime, I’m going snorkeling.