With nothing exciting to report from behind my desk in San Francisco (and no imminent travel on the horizon) I'm once again calling upon other CORAL staff to pitch-in. Bryan Dias, CORAL's newest Program Manager, is fresh back from Maui and Oahu and I've twisted his arm for some entertaining travelogue. Take it away Bryan:
I was just enjoying a bite and brew at the Koho Grill–a mall restaurant I was resigned to dining in as it was near my Kahalui hotel–and reflecting on what had been, to that point, a successful trip for CORAL.
We had navigated with good results a meeting of Maui-based stakeholders for the voluntary standards project we are facilitating after our positive experience (still a work in progress) with the Meso-American Reef region. The project was moving forward well and folks were demonstrating a lot of enthusiasm for the project – very rewarding.
I had also conducted a truly trying (note sarcasm) site visit to Molokini aboard one of Ed Robinson’s Diving Adevntures’ vessels along with CORAL’s Hawaii Field Manager, Liz Foote. Being that this was the first time I had been in Hawaii for twenty-some-odd years (as a side note – not trying to date myself too much, I was feeling pretty good a few days later when a fellow International Pacific Marine Educators Conference attendee who happened to be female guessed my age to be a mere 29) and my first ever dives there, I tried to take things in stride. But, my first immersion treated me to numerous reef fishes – the common, yet majestic Moorish Idols, butterflies, parrots, damsels and surgeons as well as a Manta Ray and schooling Galapagos and White-tipped sharks. It was truly an excellent intro to Maui’s waters.
As these reflections crossed my mind, I was chatting with a nice local couple (Koho Grill is a “locals” type place) seated at the bar with me who were very generous with their Aloha Spirit and were giving me tips on where to go on the island for a little more flavor than the mall restaurant. Then, came the news flash across the bottom of the screen. Not a cut-in mind you, as every TV in the house was tuned in to watching repetitive golf highlights of the Sony Open on Oahu where just-turned 16 year-old Hawaii native, Tadd Fujikawa, has just made the cut for the final two rounds of the tourney.
The flash was the fact that a large earthquake, somewhere in the eight point-ish range, had just hit off the Kuril Islands (northeast of Japan and east of mainland Russia) and that all of the Hawaiian Islands were under a Tsunami Warning (at this point, it was called a “warning” for Hawaii, Alaska, much of Japan, and Eastern Russia and a couple other spots. Additionally, a huge swath of the Upper Pacific Rim was under a tsunami watch.) It is important to add that I’ve just moved to California from Florida where I lived for 2.5 years prior to working at CORAL and had managed to live in the “Sunshine State” for the two worst hurricane years on record. I was beginning to feel like a natural disaster magnet. Note to reader: please be advised of this before inviting me for a visit to your locale.
I also noticed that people in the restaurant, the locals who made up the majority of customers, became a bit tense. Conversations quickly turned to topics such as “Which channel will have better local news?” “Where are the Kuril Islands?” and (as the bartender flipped to CNN), “As usual CNN hasn’t picked up the story yet–if this were the mainland…” So, I am a pretty sensible guy and also now fancy myself a bit of a battle hardened veteran, due to such factors as being raised in Northern California earthquake country and boarding my house in Key Largo nine times in less than three full hurricane seasons. This being the case, I put back the rest of my pint before heading back to my room for some prep–some things still take at least a certain amount of precedent when impending doom is still some hours away (estimates for when the tsunami might impact Hawaii where cited at “about” 12:23 AM…impressive number for an approximation I thought.)
My hotel room, in the Maui Seaside, still reeking from a previous guest’s stale cigarette smoke in a non-smoking room, was on the second floor but the hotel itself is right on the water. Before you think that I was wasting CORAL funds on such a luxurious room, my primary view was of a container ship and the NCL cruise ship wharf. As I stumbled through the multitude of 70+ cable channel drivel looking for local news, I figured that I would probably be wise to pack my small bag with valuables: passport, laptop, cameras, a change of clothes, a bottle of water. Does my old Oceanic reg make the cut? I did consider using my BCD as a potential flotation device…
I was a bit torn. I was quite tired and had to be up at about 5:00 AM for another round of site visits and the like the next day but was not too convinced that the civil alert sirens that would supposedly sound if an imminent threat were to be substantiated (from what I was hearing, I wasn’t too convinced either that any substantiation or non-substantiation was going to happen) would be sufficient to wake me. So, I decided, with my bag packed and by the door, that I would watch and monitor. By now, I had found local Honolulu news that was providing non-stop coverage, including a reporter positioned at NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center where the room was abuzz with activity, computer monitors, and scrolling marquees (man, just like the National Hurricane Center HQ in Miami with which I had become intimately familiar over the past few years, I thought.)
The only conclusions at this point were there weren’t any. Even though both the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (responsible for Hawaii amongst other places) and the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) are considered model warning systems that also demonstrate good collaboration, there was no definitive information for a while. This was due to the overall systemic lack of monitoring buoys especially in the relevant area. So, I resisted sleep a bit longer, stewing a little but mostly fighting to keep my eyes open.
Then, somewhere not too far before 9:30 (now you know why I was happy to be called “29”), a mooring buoy run by the JMA had picked up the generation of a tsunami!
However, the reporter quickly added that it was estimated in the 10 centimeter range, or for those of us still paralyzed without the imperial system, about 4 inches. I was quite relieved and observed that there is, apparently, no minimum height requirement, a la Disneyland attractions, for participation in the tsunami category. I was pretty sure that my 2nd floor hotel room had at least 10cm of clearance.
Then, in a sure sign of things returning to normal, after announcing that the warnings and watches were off (at this point the main Hawaiian Islands were now under a “watch” while the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands maintained their “warning”) and that only much more adventurous revelers than I who might be on the beach after midnight need beware, the news went back to seemingly non-stop golf highlights of the Island’s new favorite son/golfer, Fujikawa. “Island living,” I thought.
Though warning systems have improved and this false alarm event is not exceptionally uncommon for Pacific Islands and elsewhere, this situation did remind me of a very important but not yet fully understood or often mentioned aspect of coral reefs-–physical protection. In many places, coral reefs provide needed buttressing against erosion from wave action–even the extreme kind caused by tropical storms and tsunamis–that threatens terra firma in places where many depend on it for their existence.
This was a nice last thought, or perhaps penultimate one, before I crashed out to rest-up for my next early start the following day. The last one, somewhere in that foggy area between sleep and consciousness, was about the possible benefits for a CORAL fundraising effort–the “I Survived the 4 Inch Tsunami” t-shirt. Some ideas are best left slept-on without taking immediate action.
