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Keep Hawaii Beautiful 2

Pick up your trash and Keep Hawaii Beautiful 2

The good deed that I had set out to accomplish was now obviously not as easy as once first anticipated. So frustrated with the scenario, so helpless with the reality…. All I could see playing back over and over in my head were the dead faces of those two Hawaiian monk seals and that cute green sea turtle , with this terrible net wrapped around their neck. There were already dead and bloated fish that had got stuck in this, “Fishes Nightmare”. I knew without a doubt that I had to help Keep Hawaii Beautiful. I had to go and get a bigger surfboard, a dive buddy and come back and cut the net free. So I paid real close attention to my bearings and took a mental note of where on the reef this hideous ocean death monster was snagged. I figured that when I got back, the current would be a lot stronger, because of the influx of tide and the wind blowing harder.

So I rounded up the best AquaMan/Waterman I know… who just so happens to be my husband, Tamayo Perry. I relayed to him the situation and with a brief moment of reluctance, he was soon all in.

So we grabbed a bigger old surfboard, a couple of knifes, diving goggles and what I thought to be a perfectly good snorkel and headed back to our paradise gone wrong. Like I thought, as we started to launch from the beach, it was noticeable that the current was sweeping harder and the tide had filled in a bit. This caused the floats to now hover just 2 feet under surface level, and although 2 feet doesn’t seem like much… they were now completely out of view, and this also makes it an extra 2 feet to swim down to cut the net. I had the board, Tamayo was swimming and at that particular time I couldn’t exactly figure out why he was swimming? So without a second thought I raced on ahead, about 170 yards and paddled straight out to the inside of the break where I had remembered my land-marks to be. Because of the higher tide the underwater visibility had gotten worse. The new conditions at hand really made locating the net extremely difficult. I swam and dove for what seemed to be ages before I found that great, big heap of Ocean Trash. Once I found it, I looked around and Tamayo was nowhere to be seen… I scanned around for him and in a moment I saw him on the way inside ledge just off the beach. I signaled with big, broad hand signals to him, to come paddle out, because I obviously had located the net. He just stood there chest deep in the water with his mask and snorkel on his head, staring at me motionless. I urged him again, via more intense hand signals, to come paddle out for I had located our target spot. He still just starred through me, motionless. After about 3 or so minutes of this strange banter, I finally paddled in and over to him to figure out what the hell he was doing.

Mother ocean we only have one

It turned out there had been a miscommunication issue and he said I had told him that it was just on the ledge of reef right off of the beach. Which is about 10 to 20 yards max. He also told me with sardonic wit, that he didn’t realize that to Help Keep Hawaii Beautiful he had to swim out nearly two football fields long, in shark infested water to do his part in conservation. After I let him whinge for a moment, he reluctantly paddled with me out to the ‘ocean rubbish of consequence’. A little known secret; Tamayo is terrified of sharks. So when he was staring at me emotionless from across the channel… he wasn’t just angry with me (although he might have been a little bit:) but rather, he was actually petrified in fear. However, at the same time, he of all people knows that the conservation and preservation of our beautiful mother ocean is of vital importance to the sustainability of life on earth. So as we approached the net, staying on mark was really hard. Especially with the strong current now ripping through the inside of the channel. This clean-up mission from the start was proving to be quite the challenge.

Because we were free diving and not scuba diving, the next task in order was diving down 20 feet multiple and consecutive times and cutting away at the net that was half wrapped around the reef and half floating like a partially collapsed spider web blowing in the wind. I’d say about 30-40 dives later, we had painstakingly got the net off the reef. There were cuts on his hands from the reef and from pulling on the nylon line so hard. Which lead to our next fear… blood in the water

stay tuned for part 3 on the short story Keep Hawaii Beautiful 2 ……

Keep Hawaii Beautiful 2day

Always keep in mind and keep an open mind… you can get surf lessons or stand up paddle lessons with us here at Oahu Surfing Experience … or, if surfing doesn’t interest you ladies, become a mermaid for a photo shoot, with Oahu Surfing Experience. Safety is our priority and we know some great small wave spots that are away from the big waves, so you can remain calm, cool and collect and feeling the exhilaration of the ocean in a much more optimal learning environment.