It was a rare, uncrowded August evening, only three of us out at Suis, surfing beneath the ghost of a fat quarter moon. When the saffron sun cleared Barbers Point and touched down in the sea, I realized that the season was changing already, heading toward autumn’s dreamy days of glassy waves.
The only bummer was the water quality: dark and silty, flecked with ominous yellow foam.
This was a Wednesday. On Saturday there had been a spill of raw sewage into the Ala Wai Canal. Tuesday night, a friend texted that she hadn’t gone surfing because “the water was pilau.” But tonight I couldn’t resist a gentle spike in wave heights and comparatively smooth conditions.
I’d been missing a lot of waves due to brown water lately. I stayed onshore for six days following the record rain and runoff caused by Tropical Storm Darby after a warning from Captain Cal.
“I did one of those head-first wipeouts with my mouth open and got a huge gulp of water that went straight to my stomach. And sure enough I got the runs — bad,” the Captain said. “But Maya got it worse,” he said of his young golden retriever, who loves to chase her Frisbee in the sea.
It was sad to think of Maya suffering the effects of water pollution, but she received loving care at home. I wondered how our wild marine animals were faring: the dolphins, for instance, who visited us in the lineup last year.
It had been a hot, still September morning with a hyper-clear sea.
Just below the horizon, the dark fins and backs of the dolphins appeared, undulating in a diagonal toward shore.
They were spinner dolphins but they didn’t leap and spin. They were going slow, I thought. I forgot them as I took a wave, and when I paddled back out I saw that they’d come closer.
They approached lazily through the waves and swells until they came to rest in the midst of us. There were a half-dozen of the smooth, glistening creatures, most of them longer than our 5- to 7-foot surfboards.
We could see and hear their blowholes gape and mist. A dolphin brushed against my knee and rolled sideways; I found myself staring into a lustrous dark eye. The eye looked blank; the dolphin didn’t seem to see me.
Some of the surfers looked as enchanted as I felt. Others seemed nervous. “I hope they not going bite,” one said.
“Nah, they no going bite,” his friend replied. “Maybe they running from one shark. Shark going bite you.”
“Maybe they’re sick,” said another.
I hoped not, but the beautiful creatures do get sickened by pollution. In the Gulf of Mexico they had higher levels of pneumonia after the Deep Water Horizon oil spill. They can get toxoplasmosis from cat feces that washes out to sea. Even on clear days I’m bothered by the scent of sunscreen in the water and wonder how this affects marine life. Cetaceans have been found to suffer from the noise of sonar, motorboats and Jet Skis.
Then I remembered something I’d recently read: Spinner dolphins feed at night and rest, or “mill,” in shallow coastal areas during the day. “These guys are fine. They’re just sleeping,” I said.
The other members of the lineup agreed that was probably it. Lapsing into a silence of our own, we floated in our pod with the big, sky-blue creatures in our midst, taking care not to disturb them as we came and went.
I haven’t seen the dolphins up close at Suis since. I hope they’ve found some clean, calm waters that will stay that way.
“In the Lineup” features Hawaii’s oceangoers and their regular hangouts, from the beach to the deep blue sea. It appears every other Sunday. Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@ staradvertiser.com or call 529-4772.
