Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep

Interval in the Land of the Lost
As a breather, recovery and surface interval, we headed down the Hamakua coast in the relatively calmer waters farther offshore to off-gas while basking in the prehistoric glow of the lush Pololu Valley. The steep slopes all along this coast are etched with dozens of white ribbons of water that rush down lavish green cliffs in hot pursuit of the sea. Where the shore and sea meet a permanent phantom mist arises, no doubt a place where the ancestral Hawaiian spirits carouse in this time-lost and private corner of the land and sea. The mist rises, dances, swirls, parts, then goes through the routine again and again, as if it is the essential joy of the life vaporous.

While the Kohala Coast revels in sunshine and ethereal volcano-scapes, the Hamakua Coast lives in a primordial dream that seems impossibly remote and untouched in today’s modern world. For a moment we each stood at the rail, silently admiring the landscape as if it were suspended above the Earth like a work of art.

Then Paul spotted a breaching humpback whale in deeper water. Suddenly, the trance turned kinetic and we were off, the mist-dusted coast a distant memory.

The humpback was a juvenile. We all stood on the rail, coiled and ready as we awaited the next launch. The whale leaped skyward once more, then disappeared. But, Paul noted, we were footsteps away from the undersea pinnacles he’d wanted to explore for nearly three decades. And the pull of the water was upon us once again.

First Peek
There’s a moment, just before you stride off the swimstep, when you realize that you have no idea what’s below your fins. At this spot, at this time, our intrepid little group would be the first divers to explore a place that has not felt the gaze of man. And sometimes that will make you do something you shouldn’t.

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The swells had taken on a life their own at this point. Paul couldn’t anchor, so we had to time our leaps of faith off the swimstep perfectly. We hit the water and swam like mad for the top of the pinnacle at 85 feet, hoping there’d be no current to wash us out to sea.  Once we hit the water, we didn’t give another thought to what awaited at the surface. One by one, like astronauts, we settled on this unexplored planet in the sea. Unlike the nearshore pinnacles, these seamounts were washed with the kind of clear, 100-foot-viz water only found in Hawaii.

Immediately we knew that our efforts were not in vain. Though we were still getting tossed around by the swells and swirling currents, we’d found an oasis. Above the seamount, bluefin trevally patrolled. Aggregations of black durgon triggerfish and teardrop, pyramid and threadfin butterflyfish prowled the uppermost part of the mount. The protected areas were all covered with tremendously healthy stark white and red gorgonians, which provided respite for a wary peacock grouper and a shy potter’s angelfish. Yellowmargin eels were squeezed into impossible crevices We all kept looking to the blue and were rewarded with a couple of passes by ancient green sea turtles, sadly too far away and too deep for us to pursue. 

Our time at this depth was short, and too soon we had to ascend. The swells, which had begun life in far corner of the Pacific and traveled across the wide blue field of the ocean, arrived on this coast in earnest and full of fury. We bobbed up and down, rising sometimes up to 12 feet. Our luxury haven, the 62-foot Sunseeker, now looked like a house ready to fall on our heads — more Whomping Willow from Harry Potter than a place of refuge.

We figured out that among the group of us we had more than 35,000 dives under our collective belts. But at that moment, as we were being rocked in the cradle of the deep, we wondered how the heck we were ever going to get back on the boat. We all knew this with certainty: We were just a part of the ocean right then, no more or less important than the molecules of water that churned around us. And the heaving Sunseeker was certainly indifferent to us. I don’t recall exactly  how we did it, but Paul managed to get us all back on the boat, and soon we were rounding Opulu Point, passing the 5^th-century Hawaiian ruins of the Mo’okini Heiau and once again coursing along the north Kohala Coast.

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