BLACK CORAL ON MOLOKINI

At the rudder of the boat was Jason, a Portuguese fisherman who had once held the reputation of being the strongest man on Maui. He still was unbelievably strong, although he was now well over fifty years old, and "washed out". as he liked to say himself. I have rarely seen a man handle a boat with more skill than Jason did. Maybe his name and ancestry combined to make this man one of the rare allround and intrepid types of explorers and navigators, types which you expect to have died out with the last sailing ships.
The second man, Paul;, was a large, heavy-built doctor, who had come to the islands to forget his ex-wife and his sorrows. I had met him in Honolulu by luck and accident, because I was desperately looking for a diving buddy who could find the time to come along on a six week submarine research project. At first,I had been a bit skeptical about the proposition to put someone of his dimensions in our small boat, but Paul proved to be surprisingly agile, capable and full of stamina.

At that time, I was investigating the growth of coral reefs on top of the underwater extensions of lava flows. Once every two weeks, however, I took a day off to make a trip to Molokini or some other spot in the channels between the islands, to dive for black coral.

Besides the excitement of these (potentially) dangerous and deep dives, these trips were profitable, because the coral brought a good price. It is used to make jewelry and small statuetttes, or the graceful branches of the black coral tree are used themselves for decoration.

LINKS: Water Activity Around Maui - Coral Reef Network - Precious Corals Around Hawaii - BLO fecit 20031207 - index of stories - next page