Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Honu at Laniakea Beach North Shore

Leaving Haleiwa and heading north, the first beach you come to is Laniakea Beach, it's a short drive so dealing with the traffic isn't too bad. It has gorgeous sand but not really much of a place to swim, it's shallow, rocky with a large reef just under the surface of the water. There are no showers and trying to find a parking spot can be really tough but it is an amazing place to see the Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle-honu, sleeping and munching. Oh-go in the summer too because the surf in the winter is dangerous.

Those brown spots in the water...honu! There are so so many. The females lay their eggs at Kaemiloh'a or the French Frigate Shoals-a group of tiny islands and atolls in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands-just west of Necker Island, about 500 miles northwest of Oahu.

Erik took the kids out a bit to snorkel, he lost his underwater camera a few weeks ago but I was able to get him the newest model. It is amazing, the pictures are so clear and gorgeous,


Erik would bring things up from the bottom for Erica to look at while she floated around on her board,

this picture looks like a professional took it-it is so beautiful, we are loving the new little camera.



An interesting behavior of the Hawaiian Sea Turtle is basking-crawling up on shore for a snooze. This is rare among sea turtle and limited to the northwestern Hawaiian Islands. They probably don't like to be eaten by sharks so it's a great place to hang out for protection as well...though the tourists can be pretty pesky.


Evan swam with a few,
and Erica looked for little fish in the tide pools. She has on her tabi's-the rocks are very slick.
The turtles feed on the algae growing on the reef and rocks.
We didn't stay for the sunset but I know that would have been beautiful.

1 comment:

Clint, Tanya, Dane and Kimber said...

too cool! Those underwater pictures are awesome!